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

On Sat, 5 Jul 2003 13:06:27 +0200, =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F6rg=20Rhiemeier?=
<joerg_rhiemeier@...> wrote:

>> >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/).
I agree.  Furthermore, I would say that PIE /i/ and /u/ are reductions from
earlier /y/ and /w/ in avocalic environments; i.e., /i/ and /u/ are
syllabic /y/ and /w/.  So in all probability, the earliest PIE vowel system
was almost monovocalic: a low-central unrounded vowel /a/ with two
allophones, /á/ (high tone) and /à/ (low tone).

It appears that the earlier PIE declension system was based on a more or
less regular penultimate accent system, which may have been initially
stress-accent and then became tonal accent.  I'll present some
reconstructions based on this hypothesis (I'll denote low-tone /à/ as 'a'):

kárda 'heart' gen. sg. kardása
> kárd, kardás
> kerd, kr.des
gánwa 'knee' gen. sg. ganwása
> gánu, ganwás
> genu, gn.wes
páda 'foot' gen. sg. padása
> pád, padás
> ped, p(o)des
However,

ganáwa- 'know' > g(a)náu- > gno-
g(a)naumána 'name' > gnaumán > (g)nomen
gen. sg. gnaumanás > (g)nomn.es

Or,

ganáxWa- 'know' > ganáxW- > gnox- ~ gnoh-
g(a)naxWmána 'name' > gnoxmen > nomen
gen. sg. g(a)naxWmanás > (g)nomn.es

Of course, this leaves a couple unanswered questions:

1. In 'active' root nouns, why is the nominative singular *-s but the
genitive singular is *-os or *-es?

2. Where did the ablaut distinctions between verbs and nouns of the same
root come from?  For example, Latin tego 'I cover' vs. toga '(a) cover,'
presumably from PIE *teg-.

>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.
Agreed.  One question though: why did (Pre-)PIE /a/ remain /a/ before /x/?
For example, hypothesized PIE root xag- 'drive' > Latin ago 'I drive.'  The
Greek reflexes seem clearer: (Pre-)PIE /h/ > /?/, /x/ > /h/, /xW/ > /(h)o/.

>> 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.
It's not a stative conjugation in Hungarian, it's the 'indefinite
conjugation.'  There is 1sg -Vk, 2sg -sz, 3sg -0, 1pl -Vnk, 2pl -tok, 3pl -
nak.  Selkup also has a 1sg stative/intransitive verb ending -k ~ -ng.  As
far as I know, those are the only examples of such a stative in the Uralic
languages.

I believe that a reconstruction of a Uralic stative paradigm similar to
that of Hungarian or Selkup is problematic.  Both languages appear to have
been heavily influenced by substrate languages, Turkic and other in
Hungarian, and presumably Paleosiberian in Selkup.  Either that or the
Magyars and Selkups originally spoke other languages and then adopted a
Uralic language, as Ago Kunnap suggests.

>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.
There is evidence that certain PIE statives/mediopassives were re-
interpreted as actives.  For example, Greek oida 'I know' (presumably
stative of PIE *weid- 'see') and Latin sequor 'I follow' (mediopassive of
PIE *sekW- 'see, keep in sight').

>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.
PIE reconstruction, as it stands today, is very muddled.  I think the
reason behind this is that PIE went through at least two changes in its
accent system during its 'lifetime.'  There's also a very real possibility
that some of the accepted reconstructed forms are incorrect.  Take
*wl.kWos, for example.  The accent is on the /l./, which would've arose
only by reduction of unaccented vowels.  It seems to me that the simplest
reconstruction is this:

wálkWa-s > welkWos > wl.kWos

This means that there was a change such that wel- > wl.-.  Is that
realistic?  I can see no other plausible origin for wl.kWos.

- Rob