Re: Questions about Hungarian

On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 02:16:43PM +0100, Racsko Tamas wrote:
> On 3 May 2004 vehke <vaksje@...> wrote:
>
> > As the exact semantics are unknown, neither PU partitive nor ablative
> > do justice as case names. My sources probably chose 'partitive' to
> > refer to the same case.
>
>   Your're probably right but the term "partitive" still makes me
> trouble speaking about PFU.
>
>   Of course, we don't know the exact semantics but we have some
> knowledge of laguage universal. Do you know languages that don't have
> ablative case (or its equivalent [e.g. elative, delative]) but have
> partitive? IMHO when naming grammatical entity it's worth sticking to
> the more fundamental cathegories that to the more specialized ones...
Oh, I fully agree fully. The question is rather why Sammallahti has a
different opinion (or source).

>
> > Eastern Sámi languages, such as Inari, still have the partitive -d.
>
>   I see. (I have only Norwegial Lappish resources.)
>
> > which is said to come from PU *-ti, PFV (Finno-Volgaic) *-tA.
>
>   My questions: Do you know other inharmonic morphemes that became
> harmonic in PFV?
Not from reference, as I don't have Sammallahti's full reconstruction,
or anyone else's for that matter, but I won't be surprised it they do
show up.

> And not just in PFV but in Proto-Ugric and in Proto-
> Permic because the latter two branch have continuants of a PU/PFU
> harmonic ablative *-tA (e.g. Erza Mordvin ablative -To/Te, elative
> -sto/ste [T = assimilated as t/t'/d/d']? Etc.
>
>   I think ther're much less questions if we reconstruct PU *-tA. E.g.
> there're examples of the change -A > -i in Finnic branch.
>
>   Are there any explanations in your sources what were the reasons of
> reconstruction of *-ti with a vocalic quality of *-i?
Unfortunately not, though itt calls for an urgent raid of the Uralic
section in the university library. ;)

> > What are, by the way, PU's vowel harmony rules?
>
>   According to the my sources, the morpheme chain was harmonic. The PFU
> had a different set of vowels in the first syllable and in the non-
> first ones. (Similarly -- but not identically -- like in Lappish
> dialects). The first syllable may contain "velar" (back and central)
> vowels (/a/, /o/, /u/, /3/) or "palatal" (front) ones (/a/, /E/, /i/,
> or maybe /y/). If the first syllable was velar, the following syllables
> contained velar /a/ or neutral /e/; if the "head" was palatal, the rest
> were palatal /E/ or neutral /e/.
/a/ occurs as both a back and a front vowel (perhaps you meant /A/)?
Could you perhaps give the corresponding UPA symbols?

>   The case suffix *-ti breakes the above rule in two points. (1) A case
> suffix can't be the first syllable in a morpheme chain, therefore its
> vowel should have been /a/, /E/ or /e/. (2) It shows palatal
> homomorphism, i.e. it doesn't have a velar variant for velar noun
> stems.
According to Sammallahti, PU does have non-initial /i/ (UPA i), as in
the following examples (in UPA):
- käxli- > PFU/PFP/FS kēli-
- sexji- > " sēji- (e with macron)
- meni-  > " meni-
And from PFU/PFP/FS:
- kūli- (u with macron), Estonian kuulama, NSámi gullat

Yet, that doesn't explain the vowel change PU *-ti > *-tA (not to mention
becoming harmonic), apart from the _kūli_ example. Hmm...

>   /i/ can be neutral only in a few FU languages and these are proved to
> be relatively late developments, cf. Finnish sika, Estonian siga 'pig'
> but Erza Mordvin tuvo (due to a /u/ > /1/ > /i/ change) or Finnish
> kaksi < PF *kakta.
Is that PFU /u/? Can't seem to find the sound change. Or is /u/ Erzyan,
while /i/ is PU?

>   Of course we could re-design PFU vowel harmony rules in order to cram
> *-ti into it. But in this case it wouldn't be a coherent system longer.
Coherence, why I feel no need for such. :)

--
vehke.