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Re: Nostratic (was Re: Schwebeablaut (was Re: tolkien?))

From:Rob Haden <magwich78@...>
Date:Sunday, December 21, 2003, 19:14
On Sun, 21 Dec 2003 15:38:20 +0100, =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F6rg?= Rhiemeier
<joerg_rhiemeier@...> wrote:

>The Black Sea Flood happened around 5500 BC; within the next 500 years, >the neolithic farming tribes had reached the Rhine. The flood must >have displaced a large number of people. > >My hypothesis of how this is connected is that the language spoken >by the refugees was not PIE proper, but an ancestor of the latter. >PIE proper is one of the languages that evolved within the large >area populated by the refugees, and I place it in central Ukraine >shortly before 4000 BC.
Ah. Perhaps the Black Sea refugees spoke languages which formed the substrates of later IE languages, once the Kurgans had invaded Europe?
>Yes, I have heard that, too, especially with regard to the Balto-Finnic >languages.
Yes. Many dialects of spoken Finnish still preserve final vowels, in contrast to their more "progressive" neighbors, namely Estonian and Karelian. It seems that within the scheme of Proto-Balto-Finnic, final vowels were elided only in words with a nasal, liquid, or /s/ in the final syllable (e.g. avoin 'key' < *avaimi).
>> Since the people of northeastern Europe and Northern Asia are presumed to >> have been (semi) nomadic hunter-gatherers, there would have been much
more
>> contact between disparate language groups than if they were sedentary >> agricultural people. > >Yep.
Thus I think that the thesis posited by Marcantonio (et al.?), that there is no Uralic family proper, but a continuum of dialects and areal isoglosses via contact, is probably true.
>Under the theory I posted, pre-ablaut *i and *u give the same results >as pre-ablaut *ai and *au. I see little reason for a typologically >unlikely system /a ai au/ without true high vowels /i/ and /u/ >when one can have a more natural /a i u/, either with or without >the diphthongs /ai/ and /au/.
Even in languages which do not recognize vowel length as phonemic, stressed vowels are lengthened. Thus, it is certainly possible that stressed vowels in a hypothetical 3-vowel Pre-PIE became lengthened. Then, a change similar to the Great Vowel Shift in English could have occurred, whereby /i:/ > /ai/ and /u:/ > /au/. The situation is more ambiguous with /a:/. In later IE languages, /a:/ could become either /e(:)/ (as in Ionic Greek) or /o(:)/ (as in Germanic and Balto-Slavic). Perhaps it could become either in (Pre-) PIE. Furthermore, /ai/ can become either /ei/ or /oi/, as attested in natural languages.
>Why not posit *likWa? The problem arises only because you insist >on a one-vowel system ***which is not attested in any language***.
Well, there would not be only one vowel period. There would be a basic vowel with two or four allophones, and perhaps even a contrast in height (/a/ vs. /@/). There are some Caucasian languages that are like this. The possibilities are: /a/ & /a:/ /a/ & /á/ (where the acute accent denotes either stress or tonal accent) /a/, /a:/, /á/, & /á:/ /a/, /@/ /a/, /a:/, /@/, /@:/ /a/, /á/, /@/, /@"/ /a/, /a:/, /á/, /á:/, /@/, /@:/, /@"/, & /@:"/ It all depends on what you recognize as separate phonemes.
>Yes. Paul Bennett goes as far as positing a series of dental-velar >doubly articulated stops (i.e., treating *tk as monophonemic), >but that is untenable because forms with *tk- are zero grades, >alternating with *tek-.
Yes, as in Greek tiktô < *ti-tk-. However, as Muke pointed out, there are cases of initial *tk- (and *dhgh-) in PIE. Why aren't there any attested cases of *dg-? It seems that many IE languages (if not most) underwent a markedness shift, where velar stops instead of dental stops became the most marked.
>In nouns: accent on the last stem vowel in the nominative, accusative >and locative singular, on the ending in the other cases. >(This includes the especially archaic root nouns.) >In verbs: accent on the last stem vowel in the singular, >on the ending in the plural.
OK, so with 'foot': Ns pe:ds/po:ds As pé:dm/pó:dm Gs podés/pedós Ds pedéy/podéy Etc. Is this correct? Certainly the declension of 'foot' suggests that there was some kind of vowel length distinction in earlier PIE. I can't think of an example with verbs right now.
>This can be easily explained if one assumes that the unaccented >endings were monosyllabic, the accented ones bisyllabic. > >Example: > >nom. *kwán-sa > *kwán-s > *kwo:n >gen. *kwan-ása > *kun-ás > *kunós > >(I can't explain why the accented vowels surface as *o, though.)
Perhaps the genitive suffix was originally *-sa, and when it also came to denote transitive subject, the genitive of the pronoun *a-, *asa, was attached to the noun? I think this makes sense, since the thematic nouns used pronominal elements in their genitives as well (due to earlier syncretism).
>There is indeed more to thematic stems than just a stem-final *-a. >Some of the endings are different from the athematic endings, >showing parallels to the pronominal endings. Some scholars >thus assume that thematic nouns has pronominal elements suffixed.
The endings are actually pretty similar. The major difference between thematic and athematic is with the genitives, where the former has a pronominal element attached.
>I don't know. Perhaps the etymology for the 3rd person is incorrect, >and it is simply an endingless form to which no *ya-ku was suffixed.
In my opinion, that would obliterate the entire theory.
>This is not impossible though the endings are clearly different >(nom. *-s < *-sa, gen. *-os < *-asa).
They're not really different. Both are based on /s/, and the latter has an initial vowel which could easily mean it was originally a genitive pronoun. This would be akin to saying "the horse its saddle fell off."
>I assume an active-stative of Pre-PIE in which agents were marked >with *-sa and patients with *-ma, whatever the origins of the endings.
As do I. Do you see what I'm saying, though? However, suffix neuters in PIE (neuters ending in *-r, *-n, *-l, *-s) do not take any case marking for patient. I think that the determinative endings were enough to know that they were inanimate.
>It is even possible that the genitive case contains a trace of >suffixaufnahme. The actual genitive suffix would thus have been *-a; >to this was suffixed the case of the head noun. > >Example: `the man's dog' > >nom. *h2anar-a-sa kwan-sa >dat. *h2anar-a-aya kwan-aya
I prefer: nom. *xanar(a)-asa kawan(a)-sa dat. *xanar(a)-asa kawan(a)-aya With penultimate accent, this would have given: nom. *xnarás kwans dat. *xnarás kwnái Which would give reconstructed PIE: nom. *h2nerós kwons dat. *h2nerós kunéi For this to work, it must have been the case that neither 'man' nor 'dog' ended in a vowel when the case endings became attached. The medial *o in *kwons could be attributed to back-rounding earlier *a. It is also possible that *ó came from earlier *á: instead of *á. OR, *ó is a Greek innovation -- all the other IE branches seem to indicate *é only. What do you think?
>In the later stage, the nominative of the genitive was generalized. > >(Assuming that genitives preceded nouns in Pre-PIE.)
According to Lehmann, PIE was SOV, so genitives preceded nouns. However, this also suggests that PIE originally had postpositions instead of prepositions. I have a theory on how that changed, if you're interested in hearing about it.
>Yes, they think in different ways than humans, and thus recognize >different, often very surprising patterns.
Something to think about :) - Rob

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Muke Tever <hotblack@...>