Back to business: emphatic particles and verbal extensions

Now, returning to the safer topic of comparative linguistics, I still am trying to account for how my new solution concerning the prehistoric genesis of Proto-Indo-European's uvular sounds helps (or maybe hinders?) my attempts at trying to figure out the origins of the emphatic particle *[ǵ/g](ʰ)[e/o] which is thus far so hideously reconstructed by current Indo-Europeanists.

However, if we take the velar contained in the nominative first person singular pronoun, which appears to contain the fossilized remnants of the earliest form of the emphatic particle when the pronoun was first coined in the Late Period (ie. *h₁eǵoh₂, literally "(as for) my being here" from *h₁e "here" + *ǵe [emphatic] + *-oh₂ [old 1ps subjunctive]; parallel in development to the 1ps pronouns of Inuktitut uva-ŋa, Aleut ti-ŋ, and Proto-Semitic *an-āku), we are pointed to *ǵe as the most appropriate reconstruction. Any other forms of this particle would then have developed later after presumably being influenced by or merging with other existing words or particles with similar phonetics and meaning. In the earlier Mid IE (MIE) stage, we could then posit an emphatic particle *g̰a derived from Indo-Aegean *k’ə. From there, if comparable to Uralic emphatic *-ka attached to some pronominal stems^[1], we might finally reconstruct a Proto-Steppe emphatic particle *k’ə to account for both the Indo-European and Uralic forms. Can you all swallow that? Granted, this all remains tentative for now, but it's worth a shot.

Considering the differing velar stop in the emphatic particle, the verbal extension with uvular stop, seen in PIE verbs like *yeu-g- "to join" whose *g-less counterpart has identical semantics, must not be related afterall as I had previously assumed. Instead I'd like to suggest that it derives from a Mid IE aspectual marker *-ɢ̰a-, which originally might have conveyed a perfective sense. This implies earlier Indo-Aegean *-k’a- (thus Etruscan -ac- [perfective] as in tur-ac-e "was given") and relatable then to the Uralic perfective in *-ka. In this case, a Proto-Steppe perfective suffix *-k’a would be in order to explain the later forms.

That so far is my solution concerning that. Let's see if this idea sticks.


NOTES
^[1] Fortescue, Language Relations Across Bering Strait (1998), p.113 (see link) confirms Uralic emphatic *-ka.

PIE Uvulars: A revised solution of their origin

I've been frought with stress this past week due to something ridiculous that happened to me. I'll recount my ordeal in the very next post coming up. At any rate, after deep relection, I think I have an awesome way to rework my theory to account for the uvular phonemes in Proto-Indo-European (PIE) much better than I had before and with the least amount of added complexity. As usual, you may want to consult my continually updated document Diachrony of Pre-IE to get a grasp of what I'm suggesting. Listen to this latest crazy idea of mine.

I would like to now propose that distinct uvular phonemes had already existed by the end of Old IE (OIE) when unstressed vowels merged phonetically to schwa. They were, as I stated before, initially produced by allophonic differences dependent on the neighbouring vowel. Originally at the Proto-Indo-Aegean stage (before 7000 BCE), a velar sound (ie. any of *x, *xʷ, *k, *kʷ, *g̰, *g̰ʷ, *g, or *gʷ) neighbouring the low vowel *a acquired an allophone with a [+low] quality (ie. *x → [χ], *xʷ → [χʷ], *k → [q], *kʷ → [qʷ], *g̰ → [ɢ̰], *g̰ʷ → [ɢ̰ʷ], *g → [ɢ], or *gʷ → [ɢʷ]). I've already mentioned that the Mongolic language, Khalkha, exhibits the same alternation. There are also the examples of Even and Yakut that are both undergoing similar processes of phonemicization of uvulars as I describe for earlier stages of Pre-IE^[1]. So when unstressed vowels merged in OIE, the nature of the uvularization automatically became obscured.

However to add to this idea, I also propose that Indo-Aegean's Decentralization of the inherited vowel system hadn't caused merger of former accented *ə to *a just yet. Rather, the two vowels must have remained distinct for a while in OIE until phonemicization of uvulars was complete.

With these revisions come some interesting changes to my views concerning some important roots and their prehistoric etymologies. For example, the well-known PIE root for "dog", *ḱwon-, might then ultimately originate from Proto-Steppe *kə-huni "tamed canine" (not *ka-huni, as I believed before), thus becoming Indo-Aegean *kəxʷanə and then MIE *kaχʷána due to Penultimate Accent Shift (PAS). The vowel *ə in that example, not being a low vowel, didn't uvularize the preceding word-initial velar stop to *q-, although the following laryngeal was uvularized by the second vowel. To explain another example, PIE *kreuh₂- "raw flesh", we must reconstruct MIE *qaréuxa- to account for it with a distinct uvular stop at the beginning to yield later PIE *k-. If this was a native term used in the earliest stages preceding PAS, then only *a may be prescribed in the first syllable in order to explain the later uvular, thus we should presume earlier *kárəuxə-.

This also has an impact on Proto-Semitic (PSem) loans that I identify in my online pdf. With the allowance of uvulars at this stage of cultural and linguistic contact between PIE and PSem, the interaction between the two will have to be revised slightly. For example, PSem participle *māšiʔu is now more understandably converted to MIE *mésɢ̰a- (> PIE *mesg- "to dip in water") with uvular stop *ɢ̰ because it would have been the closest approximation possible to a word-medial glottal stop for an MIE speaker. I maintain that word-medial glottal stops did not exist in the language at this stage.

I'll save my solutions concerning the possible geneses of the poorly reconstructed PIE particle *[ǵ/g](ʰ)[e/o] and the mystery verbal extension -g- for a later post.


NOTES
^[1] Fortescue, Language Relations Across Bering Strait (1998), p.72 (see link) explains that uvularization of velars neighbouring low and/or back vowels is quite linguistically natural.

Confused about PIE's intensive particle *ge

I'm so confused about the "intensive particle" in Proto-Indo-European (PIE) right now. The exact nature of the particle is related to my previous ponderings on uvulars and their Pre-IE origins. It seems that some Indoeuropeanists reconstruct *ǵe^[1] and some reconstruct *ge. Then there's also *gʰe which appears to be reconstructed alongside *ǵʰi as in the emphatic negation *né-ǵʰi "not at all"^[2]. All of them are supposedly "intensive" particles with the same function.

What makes this more confusing is that I'm pretty sure that the pronoun *h₁éǵoh₂ "I" has to be the product of *e, *ǵe [intensive particle] and *-oh₂ [old 1ps subjunctive]. Yet if so, everything in that word implies that the velar was originally *ǵ, not *g (see Paleoglot, The Origin of Indo-European Ego, Apr 07 2008). Yet if it started out as *ǵ, it can't explain what appears to be an intensive or punctual suffix *-g- used on verbs like *yeu-g- "to join" (c.f. *yeu- "to join") and *bʰoh₁-g- "to bake" (c.f. *bʰeh₁- "to warm"). Surely this is connected, no? It also seems suspect that a productive particle or suffix would have used such a marked phoneme (i.e. As I've stated earlier, *g is likely to me to be a uvular, creaky-voiced stop rather than a "plain" one as per traditional reconstruction). My instinct is telling me that it surely must have once been *ǵ (i.e. a plain voiced velar stop in the revised reconstruction) but then this denies a link to the verbal extension in uvular *-g-.

I'm so confused and so far I can't make heads or tails of it yet I know that all of these things must be connected somehow.


UPDATES
(November 13 2008) Corrected the definition of *bʰeh₁- from "to burn" to "to warm". It's just a slight technicality that doesn't affect my above reasoning.


NOTES
^[1] Beekes, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (1995), p.222 (see link).
^[2] Both unpalatalized *gʰe and palatalized *né-ǵʰi with different voiced velars are shown boldly on the same page of Mallory/Adams, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World (2006), p.69 (see link), emphasizing my point that something may be a little wonky with the reconstruction of this particle which appears to have too many possible forms: *ǵe, *ge, *ǵʰe, *gʰe, *ǵʰi or *gʰo.

Phonemicization of uvulars in Old IE?

I just had a nifty idea that I'm trying out. Bear with me. Again, this all refers back to my pdf containing my latest summary of theories of detailed chronology in Pre-IE so it might be interesting for any of you to take a gander who have not done so already: click here.

I'm doing another thought experiment here. Instinctively, I just can't let go of the idea that uvulars in PIE (Proto-Indo-European) were born at some point out of allophones of velars and that this allophony was initially triggered by neighbouring vowels. This is similar to what goes on in Khalkha (Mongolian). So in other words, *k when neighbouring a low vowel, *a, would once have yielded a uvular allophone /q/ (which is also phonetically speaking [+low]) while next to higher vowels, the more common /k/ would surface.

However, since I love simplicity and Occam's Razor so much, I wanted to see if I could cut it to the bare minimum and have this uvularization only possible in accented syllables in Mid IE. This almost explains everything since clusters like *kC- (i.e. phonetically /qC-/) are pretty rare in PIE. Unfortunately, they do occur nonetheless and, not only that, so do other well-established roots like *yeug- "to join" which imply pretty heavily that I'm wrong about uvularization only occuring in unaccented Mid IE (MIE) syllables since the corresponding MIE form of *yeug- could only have been *yéuCa- and yet a plain *g in place of this *C is insufficient to explain the later uvular we see in PIE. I've avoided this problem too long obviously so today's the day!

Ergo, if I'm correct that vowels triggered this uvularization in the first place and yet if I'm also correct that unaccented vowels merged into a single schwa by Mid IE, I'm forced to admit that uvulars must have already been phonemicized in the language by the time of contact with Proto-Semitic, circa 5500 BCE. Egad! I'll see where that idea takes me. It's just a titulating thought for now so forgive the mess.

Daydreaming about unattested Etruscan pronouns

Considering the pronominal system that I've ironed out lately for the Old IE stage, I figure that the previous Indo-Aegean stage shouldn't have been much different. So in that light, it's fun to ponder a little on all the Etruscan pronouns yet to be uncovered in future artefacts and what we might expect to find by working backwards from Indo-European. If you don't already know, the only pronouns that are known for certain in Etruscan are the 1st person singular, the 3rd person singular animate and the 3rd person singular inanimate pronouns.

Now, perhaps I should reiterate my position on Etruscan's relationship to Indo-European by stating that I emphatically *do not* believe that Etruscan or any of its tongues that I believe are part of a Proto-Aegean language family (Lemnian, Rhaetic, Eteo-Cypriot, Eteo-Cretan, and Minoan) are classifiable as Indo-European languages whatsoever. However, I do believe that there is an ultimate relationship between Proto-Aegean and Proto-Indo-European and that they had diverged from each other by around 7000 BCE. I also think that the relationship between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Aegean is much closer than the relationship between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic. If I'm correct, it's a productive topic for budding Nostraticists to delve into further.

So for idle kicks, here's my latest superficial attempt at fleshing out the Etruscan pronominal system:

	singular	plural
1st person	mi (nom.) mini (obl.)	*vi (nom.) *mer (obl.)
2nd person	*zu (nom.) *zini (obl.)	*ti (nom./obl)
3rd person animate	an	in
3rd person inanimate	in	in

The trouble with the PIE 1st & 2nd person plural endings (3)

(Continued from The trouble with the PIE 1st & 2nd person plural endings (2).)

When we look at the pair *-mén(i)/*-tén(i), the so-called plural *-n- appears to be only explainable as the product of analogy with early MIE 3pp ending *-éna before the time when *ta “that” (> PIE *to-) was employed to extend the 3^rd person singular and plural endings. This termination may once have spread from the third person plural active to the rest of the plural terminations at an early date. QAR predicts accent on *e and the etymology of these endings is transparent indicating that *-mén(i) and *-tén(i) date to at least the Mid IE period before Syncope had yet to take effect.

Now, if we know that *-mén(i) and *-tén(i) are quite ancient, it follows that the accentuation of *-més and *-té can be explained as analogy with older *-mén and *-tén. However, the lack of *-i in primary *-més and *-té still begs an answer. Logically, whatever the source of these unextended endings, they must have once had no need for the indicative *-i. This may indicate a particular usage outside of the primary conjugation. I believe that a possible reason for this is that these latter pair of endings were taken directly from the independent oblique plural pronouns of the time: *mes and *te. MIE enclitic *mas regularly becomes *n̥s via Syncope, and was then later extended analogically as *nos by the time of PIE proper. MIE 2pp oblique *te however (*tei in the nominative case) was replaced in the meantime by an inanimate noun *yáuas “(the) group”^[1] (> early Late IE *yaus), thereby obscuring the ultimate source of later 2pp ending *-té.

If this is all correct, it's then probable to me that these alternative endings were first coined as early as the late Mid IE period and that dialectal replacement of *-méni and *-téni by *i-less, pronoun-derived alternatives *-més and *-té began to spread during the Late IE period.

Thus I think we now have a sensible solution to the reconstruction of the Old IE objective endings preceding the agglutination of “indicative” postclitic demonstrative *əi (> PIE *-i):

	singular	plural
1st person	*-əm	*-mənə
2nd person	*-əs	*-tənə
3rd person	*-ə	*-ənə

Furthermore, we may possibly reconstruct both the singular and plural independent pronoun forms for the first and second persons with greater depth:

	singular	plural
1st person	*məi (nom.)	*wəi (nom.)
	*mə (enc.)	*məs (enc./obl.)
	*mə́nə (obl.)
2nd person	*tau (nom.)	*təi (nom.)
	*tʷə (enc.)	*tə (enc./obl.)
	*tə́nə (obl.)

And now everything in the 3000 years prior to PIE is explained...

... Or is it?! Alas, my work is never done. Happy Halloween, everyone!


NOTES
^[1] The basic root *yeu- "to bind, join together" is acknowledged in Mallory/Adams, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World (2006), p.522 (see link). It is also deemed the underlying root of extended *yeu-g- with identical meaning which is the source of inanimate thematic *yugóm "a yoke" as expounded upon by Szemerényi, Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics (1999), p.272, fn.10 (see link).

The trouble with the PIE 1st & 2nd person plural endings (2)

(Continued from The trouble with the PIE 1st & 2nd person plural endings.)

My goal in this latest blog rant is to find a pleasing reconstruction of the Old IE (OIE) objective conjugation, that is, the antecedent of Proto-Indo-European's (PIE) *mi-conjugation. I'll be referring back to Pre-IE sound changes as I've defined them in my online pdf in order to find my solution. Before we can arrive at a solution, however, we must piece together what happened with the first and second persons plural endings. I guess to keep this topic together, we first might peck off a few options of possible ancient protoforms. Here we go.

The first, most obvious post-IE innovation is *-mosi/*-mos/*-mo as might be based on Latin -mus or OIr. -m, for example. This must be a new phenomenon that, at the very least, postdates Schwa Diffusion since in order for *o to have developed in an unstressed syllable, *s would have to be voiced at the time. Yet, this is not possible because we know that the plural had unvoiced *s throughout the Late IE period, that it was unaccented and that its preceding vocalism was *e as a result. Likewise, just in case some may think that *-mes was instead the product of 1ps *-m and 2ps *-s “you” (i.e. “I and you” → “we (inclusive plural)”), the same problem arises and *e is yet again the expected vocalism since it is afterall what is found in the 2ps thematic presentive ending, *-e-si (never **-o-si). So no matter how you slice and dice the 1pp ending, forms like *-mo[s(i)] must be patterned on something else, something later. Indeed, it is no doubt affected by the independent pronoun *nos “we” (in turn a late derivative of unaccented PIE *n̥s < MIE *mas). Surely this is a post-IE form and has no bearing on PIE, let alone Pre-IE. So let's toss these endings in the trashcan straight away!

Next up are the 1pp variants *-més/*-mé and 2pp *-té. In this grouping, we observe an accent that should not be there since etymologically speaking, the 1pp ending is surely nothing more than *-me- [first person pronominal stem] and *-(e)s [plural]. Judging by QAR, the plural marker was unaccented because it contained no word-final vowel in the stages preceding Syncope . In other words, even before Syncope, *-as was the MIE plural ending, not **-ésa. Further, this word-final *s is testimony to a most ancient event which I call Indo-Aegean Sibilantization. Ultimately this plural is related to Uralic plural *-t. The sibilantization of early Indo-Aegean *t would not have happened unless *t was word-final at the time (n.b. Sibilantization also explains the origin of *s/*t-heteroclitic stems in PIE like participles in *-wos). Subsequently as a result of a lack of word-final vowel in the Mid IE (MIE) plural, the plural could never have been voiced to **-ez in the Late IE period. Yet... we find accented athematic presentive 1pp and 2pp endings nonetheless. Why??? How??? And if the primary form were *-mési and secondary were *-més, then despite unexpected accent, the source of the pattern might be a little more transparent. However, the primary form was apparently *-més without *-i and the secondary was *-mé. The absence of *-i in the primary marker adds to the strangeness but it might suggest an archaicism. The loss of *-s in the secondary is no doubt by analogy with other late innovations such as the secondary middle endings with its similar loss of *-r ultimately inspired by the inherited loss of final *-i in secondary active forms from pre-IE times. At first glance, it's impossible to tell what exactly was going on with this particular group of endings because of a few things obscuring the problem, so let's move on and come back to this group of endings later on.

Next up: the *-mén(i)/*-tén(i) group. More later.

(Continue reading The trouble with the PIE 1st & 2nd person plural endings (3).)

The trouble with the PIE 1st & 2nd person plural endings

I'm still thinking about a problem that I've never completely solved to full satisfaction yet so it's a good topic to amble through right now. It seems to me that the singular personal endings are easy enough to work backwards into Pre-IE. In the most ancient stages of Pre-IE, there must have surely been two completely different sets of endings, one used for objective/active (i.e. the *mi-set) and the other for subjective/stative (i.e. the *h₂e-set). It's safe to say that the *-t- of the 3ps and 3pp active is merely an eroded form of deictic stem *to- which was attached before the Syncope rule. This ending must have then been fully entrenched in the language by late Mid IE. So far then, this leaves me in Old IE with objective singular *-em, *-es and *-e and subjective singular *-xa, *-ta and *-a. There may also have been a special stative set: *-x, *-t and *-0. The later so-called indicative *-i (or should it be renamed declarative?) must have been agglutinated to the existing objective endings in Mid IE at the time of QAR (Quasi-penultimate Accent Rule).

So what's so problematic? Well, look at how the 1pp and 2pp active endings are reconstructed for later Proto-Indo-European (PIE). The 1pp primary ending is apparently a slight embarrassment of numerous parentheses: *-mé[s/n](i). That is to say, it could be *-mé, *-més, *-mési, *-méni or all of the above for all we know. The secondary ending is supposed to be *-mé, or possibly *-mén, or maybe even *-més. Egad! The 2pp is also idiosyncratic because for some IE dialects, specifically the "internal IE" dialects, *-té must be prescribed for both the primary and secondary conjugation in the parent language (as well as for the 2pp imperative) while in other branches such as Anatolian, primary *-téni and secondary *-tén seem more in order. Despite the madness, we can thank our lucky stars that the athematic primary and secondary 1ps, 2ps, 3ps and 3pp endings are securely reconstructed as *-m(i), *-s(i), *-t(i) and *-ént(i) respectively, but the 1pp and 2pp endings are our bratty problem children.

Now, with that intellectual teaser, perhaps we should start trying to figure out what is going on with these two persons. Which variants of these endings are more archaic? Or are they all the same age? What should we reconstruct for the Old IE stage? What is the significance and origin of this *-n- plural marker in some dialects that replaces the far more productive plural ending *-(e)s? Why isn't the deictic *-i attached to the 1pp and 2pp primary endings in some dialects? And why isn't the plural marker *-(e)s attached to the 2pp as it is in the 1pp?

So many questions, so few answers. But don't worry. Glenny's been thinking very long and hard in the past week about this. I believe I have some solutions that I will share in subsequent blog entries because this is a large topic with lots of grammatical details to juggle. Stay tuned.

(Continue reading The trouble with the PIE 1st & 2nd person plural endings (2).)

Update of my "Diachrony of Pre-IE" document

Here is the updated document as promised for today. I've added a lot of things to it and it's already turning into a monster of a pdf. I've filled out the Indo-Aegean section a bit more and rearranged the order of a few things after pondering a bit more on that early stage. After writing the last post on gemination, I'm satisfied with my new rule that combines vocalic lengthening with this consonantal lengthening which appears to be triggered by the same (i.e. the reduction of former schwa to supershort schwa). Here's the pdf hosted on esnips.com:

DiachronyOfPreIE_2008Jul15

Hosted by eSnips

The mess with early gemination that I've been previously speaking about has oddly enough led me down a new quest: Proto-Kartvelian (PK) loans. I previously used *ḱerd- "heart" as one of my MIE examples undergoing gemination and vowel lengthening. Yet it turns out that while it is often associated with PK *m̥-k’erd- "chest", I've never yet come across an accurate explanation as to how Proto-Indo-European (PIE) either acquired these loans or how they were given to Proto-Kartvelian. Where and when?? Then when I survey the PIE words that are purportedly shared with Proto-Kartvelian, I notice that they appear to be loaned most recently within the Late IE period. If that's true, I can't in good conscience ever use this item again when discussing Mid IE. I might speak more on this interesting issue later.

A few more words on my new Gemination rule for Pre-IE

I'm getting some great feedback and resistance to my new rule. I love resistance! It keeps me on my toes. As I said before, I'm exploring a better way of explaining what appears to be word-final voicing in PIE based on Jens Rasmussen's published input on an earlier voiced nominative singular *-z and the simultaneous existance of *-d. My view remains that they come from deictic stems *so- and *to-, and I'm sticking to that story. Yet this implies word-final voicing which is exceedingly rare and therefore yucky in a good theory.

Tropylium had got me thinking about a rule based on secondary stress after objecting to the idea that the rule would only occur in unstressed positions, but after pondering on that yesterday (and then again at 3AM tossing and turning), I came back to my senses and realized why this cannot be. As I have it so far, my Reduction rule effectively bifurcates a former schwa (represented as unstressed *a in my MIE notation) to either supershort schwa (the default change) or regular schwa. Since my Syncope rule only deletes supershort schwa but not regular schwa, evidentally the voicing can only have occured before the supershort schwas. This may sound contrived to some but the phonetics are really starting to make sense to me, so let me explain it in detail now.

The reduction or deletion of a word-final vowel with simultaneous gemination of the preceding consonant is commonplace (e.g. Japanese desu /des:/) because this is merely a matter of compensatory lengthening and syncope, both of which are commonplace linguistic processes in languages worldwide. It's important to recognize however that a preceding consonant need not geminate as the following vowel is deleted. In what way the vowel is deleted depends on the idiosyncracies of the language in question and its individual speakers. On the phonetic level, all that's happening in this sort of gemination is a transfer of duration from the vowel to the neighbouring consonant such that the overall duration of the sequence remains the same.

In the rule I'm now proposing for Pre-IE, I suggest that this same gemination occurs, but only in unstressed syllables. Again, this is not objectionable considering the example of Old English wīte "punishment" from wītje (no gemination in accented syllable) versus Old English wēstenne "desert (dat.sg.)" from wēstenje.^[1] Compare also wīte < wītje (with long vowel) versus cynne "race (dat.sg.)" < cynje (with short vowel). The importance of the latter comparison will make sense as I explain below. If the lack of stress is some factor in (but mind you, not a *cause* of) this rule, then why and how would this have occurred phonetically?

After pondering, I realized why this might be. In a stressed syllable in MIE, such as in genitives ending in *-ása, I don't expect gemination (and hence later voicing) since the thematic vowel *e in *tesyo "of this" suggests that the *s in the genitive singular was always voiceless (i.e. from early Late IE *təs-ya) in contrast to a voiced *-z in the early nominative singular ending where thematic vowel *o always arose just as it did before other voiced consonants. So clearly in an accented syllable, gemination did not occur, probably because the vowel was stressed and therefore longer in duration. The added duration of the vowel in the stressed syllable^[2] would understandably be a credible factor in blocking gemination during Reduction of the word-final supershort schwa (similar to the Old English example above) because a geminated consonant would then compete for time with the accented vowel. The longer stressed vowel naturally won that battle, gemination did not occur, and therefore the genitive remained voiceless. It's brilliant!
In an unstressed position however, there is no such competition for length because there are no tidal effects from the presence of stress. An unstressed vowel is comparatively shorter than a stressed vowel anyways. So as the vowel was reduced at the end, length was then transferred to the preceding consonant to maintain the same overall duration. Thus the unaccented sequence *-Vsa as seen in the MIE nominative singular was free to evolve to *-Vsᵊ (Reduction) > *-Vssᵊ (Gemination) > *-Vzᵊ (Voicing) > *-(V)z (Syncope).

I've also thought of a good reason why secondary stress would be insufficient in explaining this gemination. While secondary stress would have once donned most instances of the agglutinated deictics *-sa and *-ta in MIE, it wouldn't have naturally done so in unstressed MIE *kʷai-ta > *[kʷittᵊ] > PIE *kʷid "what?" yet the inanimate pronominal marker shows voicing nonetheless. Therefore it is the absence, not the presence of stress, that must be a factor in this Gemination rule and this would simply be because a stressed vowel in this language was phonetically long enough to compete against neighbouring consonant gemination in contrast to unstressed vowels which lacked the strength to resist it.

There! Now is this new theoretical account good enough to please the populus?


NOTES
^[1] Van der Hulst, Word Prosodic Systems in the Languages of Europe (1999), p.342. (see link).
^[2] Blevins, Evolutionary Phonology: The Emergence of Sound Patterns (2004), p.173 (see link): "In many languages, a stressed syllable is longer in duration than a segmentally identical unstressed syllable."

UPDATES
(July 04 2008) I corrected "Since my Syncope rule only reduces supershort schwa but not regular schwa [...]" to "Since my Syncope rule only deletes supershort schwa but not regular schwa [...]". Sorry for the potentially confusing choice of words.

Updating my Pre-IE pdf (already!)

Considering that I made my aforementioned pdf of Pre-IE changes on the fly, it's expected that I have much work to do before I can be reasonably satisfied that all the errors are ironed out and that it properly reflects my current views. Odd as it may seem, all these ideas and theories were off the top of my head and boy oh boy, did I ever feel a great weight lifted off my half-shattered brain as I poured them into that file!

Here is the second version of my file. I know it's rather soon but it's necessary to fix some errors Besides, I get off on being obsessive-compulsive, LOL!

DiachronyOfPreIE_2008Jul02.pdf

Hosted by eSnips

Now to explain the changes of my second draft of my Pre-IE theory. I recently remembered that the last time I had left the topic of Indo-Aegean Sibilantization, I had already renamed it Word-Final Lenition because word-final *-k may also have been reduced to a glottal stop at around the same time. Miguel Vidal had theorized something similar and I've come to grow fond of this spin on his ideas^[1].

I then rearranged the order of some changes in the Indo-Aegean section and added a very important sound change: Centralization. Centralization is the idea that an originally 3-dimensional vowel system was "centralized" and reduced to a 2-dimensional system. This new system that had developed would have had only a contrast in height between *a and *ə. This is also the point at which labialized stops first surface in the language. I suspect that this was an innovation spurred on by contact with an ancestral form of Proto-Abkhaz-Adyghe (aka Northwest Caucasian). This hypothesis is largely based on Allan Bomhard's theories on Nostratic and Pre-IE^[2] with a few notable twists and extra details which I've mentioned in the newest version of the pdf.

For Phoenix, I've added a few PIE examples (*wástu and *márḱos) to add support to the Labial Dissimilation Exception of Vowel Shift at the end of Late IE. Time will tell whether there are good objections against my hypothesis though.

I also corrected my error concerning "Root Aorists" in the Post-IE section since, based on the example I provided, obviously I meant to say "Thematic Aorist". Mea culpa. Thank you, Rob, for spotting that and asking questions. Verb forms like *likʷét "she left" and *widét "she knew" are now considered by Indo-Europeanists as a later innovation that can't be reconstructed for the Proto-IE stage.

NOTES
^[1] Miguel Carrasquer Vidal, "Re: [tied] Dissimilation of gW/kWVw to gVw/kVw", Cybalist (Yahoogroups) (Apr 19 2005) (see link). Here, he proposed that *-ku > *-kʷ > PIE *-h₃ while final *-ki > *-h₁. I feel that this is unnecessarily complex but that the idea of the dual ending evolving as *-ak > *-aʔ > PIE *-(i)h₁/*-e (via Laryngeal Vocalization) entoxicates me since it could potentially explain the relationship between PIE's dual on the one hand and Uralic *-k(V) & EA *-k on the other. Lenition already explains the connection between PIE *-es and Uralic plural marker in *-t.
^[2] Bomhard, Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis (1996).

Diachrony of PIE

DiachronyOfPreIE.pdf

Hosted by eSnips

The above link takes you to my new pdf detailing the changes that I've concluded thus far have taken place from as early as Proto-Indo-Aegean (c.9000 BCE) to Proto-Indo-European proper (c.4000 BCE), a span of approximately five thousand years. This is not a final product and I will be continuing to adapt and expand this pdf. The date of revision will be shown at the top of the file whenever I do update, however I will warn people when I do. (So don't worry, people! Glen will take care of everything! LOL!)

Hopefully now with this new file, I'll be understood a little better and people will be better able to follow along with my rants on Pre-IE and challenge any stubborn assumptions I have.

The early Indo-European case system and definiteness

A simple structure can be seen in the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) case system between animate and inanimate nouns and pronouns:

	animate	inanimate
nominative	*-s	zero/*-d
accusative	*-m	zero/*-d

We can see first of all a syncretism between the nominative and accusative cases in the inanimate declension which might be of some interest to people who have nightmares at night about object agreement and grammatical case like I do. While it's popular to derive the animate nominative from the genitive singular *-ós by way of ergative voodoo, I try to buck the trend in order to take advantage of a simpler explanation of the above pattern. It sometimes strikes me that these "ergative Pre-IE proponents" are simply intoxicated by the mere exoticness (or should we say apparent exoticness) of ergativity, seduced by a fashion that will some day pass (hopefully). In the global scheme of things, ergativity isn't exotic or rare; it's natural and common! So get used to it!

Anyways, back to PIE, the opposition between the animate subjects in *-s and inanimate pronouns in *-d can be quite satisfyingly compared to a similar opposition between the demonstrative stems *so-, likewise used strictly for animate subjects, and *to- used for inanimate subjects as well as for cases other than the nominative for either gender.

The fact that both *so and the nominative singular *-s are used only for animate gender is too coincidental to pass up. A deictic origin of this case ending seems painfully obvious to me and it surely is the simplest solution available by far. It however would then suggest that the nominative ending was originally optional for nominative subjects, being used more specifically to mark the definite subject as opposed to an originally endingless indefinite one. This solution works quite well considering that the pronominal inanimate ending *-d can likewise be sourced to the deictic *to- in somewhat symmetrical fashion. Adding to this, we should realize that the Indo-European accusative *-m is technically only the definite accusative case form since indefinite objects are often given other case forms (such as genitive, ablative, partitive, etc.) in many languages around the world.

If we factor in definiteness into the Pre-IE declensional system, we get the following structure that will hopefully inspire and enlighten. This is what I theorize for the Mid IE case system that preceded the PIE stage:

	animate (definite)	animate (indefinite)	inanimate
nominative	*-sa	zero	zero
accusative	*-(a)m	*-áta	zero

As you can see, I propose that the PIE declensional system originally specified definiteness for only animate subjects and animate direct objects. For all other cases (genitive, locative, etc.) and for all inanimate nouns and pronouns, definiteness was not conveyed by the case system at all. This then may explain the later pattern in the PIE system and explains how the nominative came to be marked when the tendency in languages is for nominatives to be unmarked. By this solution, I'm also suggesting that the case system was governed by an underlying animacy hierarchy^[1] of definite animate > indefinite animate > inanimate.


NOTES
^[1] For related information, read Woolford, Animacy effects on Object Agreement (1999), University of Massachussetts (see pdf).

A possible relationship between 'four' and 'eight' in PIE

Before I begin, let me just reiterate the order of changes I propose from MIE to PIE in chronological order:

- QAR (Quasi-Penultimate Accent Rule)
- Rhotacization of word-final *-n
- Dephonemicization of labialized dentals
- Reduction of unstressed *a to schwa *ə and supershort schwa *ᵊ
- Laryngeal Vocalization (in some environments)
- Syncope (with Paradigmatic Strengthening & a-Epenthesis)
- Vowel Shift

There are many other changes I propose but they extend beyond this particular topic. I really should get off my lazy arse and put this in a pdf for you because quite frankly, it's tiresome to repeat this over and over to explain myself.

In PIE, the word for 'four' is reconstructed as *kʷetwóres while 'eight' is *h₁oḱtóu (*h₁ is most likely a glottal stop /ʔ/). I admit it would seem strange that those two words could be related but then again there are stranger things that happen. Let's explore a possibility.

Based on my theory so far, *kʷetwóres should predict Mid IE (MIE) *kʷatʷáras. This is because Paradigmatic Strengthening during Syncope prevented the first *a preceding stress from eroding in order to avoid overly obscure alternations between different case forms. A system in a language can only handle so much obscurity before levelling kicks in. This corollary to Syncope helps explain the otherwise mysterious vowel change in *pedós 'of the foot' (< *pod- 'foot'). So this logically implies that during the event of Syncope, both *kʷatʷáras with animate plural ending *-as and forms in *kʷátʷar- with stress on the initial syllable and without plural ending coexisted. Reconstructing further back, MIE *kʷátʷar must be the more ancient form but this has the look of a heteroclitic, a class of inanimate nouns that alternated between *r and *n. Inanimate marking would make sense for a number word if it was perceived as a word for an abstract grouping regardless of the animacy of the entities grouped. This then would imply early Mid IE *kʷátʷan before Rhotacization, the change of word-final *-n to *-r, thereby explaining the odd r/n alternation in heteroclitic stems (e.g. PIE *yḗkʷr̥ 'liver' versus *yekʷ(e)n-ós ~ *yekʷén-s 'of the liver') . Ultimately then, since this *-an is a type of inanimate suffix, *kʷátʷa- must be the most original pre-IE root form for '4' recoverable from this brainstorming exercise.

As for 'eight', a-Epenthesis could help solve its etymology since an MIE form *kʷatʷáxʷa should in theory first change to *kʷatwáxʷa (via Dephonemicization of Labialized Dentals) then *kʷᵊtwawᵊ (via Reduction and Laryngeal Vocalization). Without a-Epenthesis we'd get a bizarre result with a crowded onset of three phonemes in the first syllable: **kʷtwau. However a-Epenthesis solves this catastrophe by easing pronunciation during the growing pains of Syncope by adding *a in the first available spot from left to right that will repair the awkward syllabics. So here, a prothetic position is most efficient which yields a pronounceable *ʔaktwáu, eventually becoming *h₁oḱtou via Vowel Shift. This explains the suspicious relationships between other pairs like *h₂awi- 'bird'/*o-h₂uy-om- 'egg' and *h₁eḱwo- 'horse'/*o-h₁ḱu- 'swift' that plague the minds of other IEists who have trouble explaining the unsemantic "o-prefix".

So with early MIE *kʷátʷan '4' and *kʷatʷáxʷa '8', the etymological relationship between the two numerals would then be clear. That is, the word '8' would have been formed in Old IE from *kʷatʷa- '4' and the inanimate collective *-xʷa, signifying literally 'fours'. If PIE's words for '3', '6' and '7' are Semitic loans as well, this means that mindful Nostraticists are logically only left with '1', '2', '4', '5', '9' and '10' to use in their tentative claims.

UPDATES
(Mar 22 2008) Eeek! A mistake: "This then would imply early Mid IE *kʷátwan before Rhotacization, [...]"! That should read *kʷátʷan with superscript w after the t. I also repaired the error in "while 'eight' is *h₁októu (*h₁ is most likely a glottal stop /ʔ/)". That should show k with a diacritic: *h₁oḱtóu. I follow traditional notation on my blog despite the issues I've mentioned concerning PIE phonetics and despite the unlikelihood that "palatal k" was actually palatal at all. (Alas, if I use my own notation, IEists and paleoglot hobbyists are likely to get confused so I'll stay conservative here to keep life simple.)