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

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.

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