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

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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