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Re: Evidence for Nostratic? (was Re: Proto-Uralic?)

From:Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>
Date:Saturday, July 5, 2003, 11:06
Rob Haden <magwich78@...> writes:

> On Fri, 4 Jul 2003 16:56:20 +0200, =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F6rg=20Rhiemeier?= > <joerg_rhiemeier@...> wrote: > > >> Also, regarding Ablaut, my hypothesis is that most of the contrasts in > >> vowel quality (e vs. o) were originally contrasts in tone. It is well- > >> noted that vowels did not undergo alternation in the presence of > >> a "laryngeal" (?, h, x, etc.). > > > >They did, but *e became *a next to *h2 and *o next to *h3. > > I disagree with the current laryngeal theory. I also reject the notion > that PIE's vowel system was centered on [e].
So do I. The non-high vowel must have been /a/, for simple typological reasons (if a language has only three vowel phonemes, these are always /a/, /i/ and /u/).
> Instead, I think that the > Ablaut alternations came from [a], that is, a low-central unrounded vowel.
Certainly.
> This vowel was then fronted and raised when subject to a high tone, and > backed and raised when subject to a low tone.
Yes, that makes perfect sense.
> If this is true, then > current laryngeal theory must be rejected,
Or rather reinterpreted.
> in favor of a new > reconstruction: "h2" was [h] or [x], and "h3" was likely a labialized > variation of "h2" (akin to plain velar stops vs. labialized velar stops). > There was also "h1" which supposedly only lengthened the vowel, and thus > was likely [h], making "h2" [x] and "h3" [xW].
This is exactly my own opinion on the laryngeals! *h1 was /h/, *h2 was /x/ and *h3 was /x^w/. The labialization correlation between *h2 and *h3 strongly points towards a velar articulation, because we know for sure that PIE had plain vs. labialized velars.
> >Yes. There were probably several factors affecting vowel quality. > > Certainly. One of them was the apparent rounding and backing of a vowel > before a nasal, as in the thematic conjugation.
Yes.
> >Not all Afro-Asiatic languages are VSO: most Cushitic langauges are SOV, > >and Chadic languages are SVO. According to some scholars, the three > >branches for which VSO order is typical (Semitic, Berber and Egyptian) > >form a distinct subgroup. Anyway, a shift in word order wasn't the factor > >that led to the split between A-A and the rest of Nostratic (assuming > >the relationship is real, which might not be the case). > > Ah, I was unaware of that. Obviously, then, PAA had SOV word-order too; it > was only the Semitic/Berber/Egyptian branch that shifted to VSO, for > whatever reason.
Yes, that's likely.
> >If it occurs only in Hungarian (not even in Ob-Ugric?), then it is > >most likely a Hungarian innovation. Unless one can prove that Uralic > >is related to some other languages which show something that is > >demonstrably cognate to the Hungarian forms. > > That's what I think, too. Although one could argue that just because no > living Indo-European language has a stative conjugation, doesn't mean it > didn't exist in Proto-Indo-European, and apply that logic to Proto-Uralic. > However, I think we would see more remnants of a stative paradigm in the > living Uralic languages if there had been one in Proto-Uralic.
So do I. The existence of a stative conjugation in Proto-Uralic cannot be ruled out, but one would expect more traces. My question: does the Hungarian stative conjugation show similarities to the PIE one? If it does, it points to a Proto-Indo-Uralic stative conjugation. If not, it is most likely a Hungarian innovation.
> >Yes; or an agent marker (the difference is that the latter is also used > >with > >intransitive verbs with active semantics, such as "to run"). > > That is certainly possible; however, are there any attested IE languages > which retained an active/stative distinction in intransitive verbs? I > can't think of any, but then again I'm no expert.
Hittite has two conjugations, one using active endings, the other stative; however, the conjugation classes no longer show any strong correlation to active/stative semantics.
> >> Syntactically/grammatically, this makes sense: the genitive case > >> is the case of origin, and only animate nouns can "originate action" > >>(i.e., > >> perform an action). The problem lies in reconciling this with the > >>current > >> reconstruction of PIE. As for the nominative-accusative syncretism, it > >>is > >> obvious that inanimate nouns could never be grammatical agents, and thus > >> never had a true nominative in PIE. > > >Exactly. > > So you can see how the genitive could arise to be used also as an > ergative/agentive case?
Yes.
> >The distinction between s-stems and thematic stems survived quite well; > >they still were distinct classes in Classical Latin at least 3000 years > >after the breakup of PIE (e.g. corpus, gen. corporis < *corpos-is). > > But you also have Latin genus (earlier *genos), gen. generis < *genes-is. > Why wasn't it *genoris?
I don't know; Latin vowel phonology is quite complex.
> >Some scholars suspect an adjectival origin for thematic nouns, but that > >remains speculative. > > I've also seen this, whereby thematic nouns arose from adjectival genitives > (or genitival adjectives, I'm not sure which one is appropriate, LOL). > However, I don't think that that explains forms such as *wlkWos 'wolf'.
It is very well possible that some thematic nouns do not derive from adjectives, but from true nouns that just happened to end in *a. But perhaps they are all former adjectives; a noun such as *wlkWos might have been an adjective that replaced the original word due to a taboo. Jörg. ______________________________________________________________________________ Sie haben mehr zu sagen als in eine SMS passt? Mit WEB.DE FreeMail ist das jetzt kein Problem mehr! http://freemail.web.de/features/?mc=021182