The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

[JounaPyysalo]

It occurred to me later that if the root is only attested from within Celtic then we can go no further back than CC /buzd-/. If this is of IE origin then the /d/ could be from either PIE /d/ or /d^h/, and the initial /b/ from PIE /b/, /b^h/, or (and is this not more likely?) /g^w/.

With all these possibilities maybe there's a chance of identifying some cognates in other branches?

JOUNA: In theory yes, except that the PIE Lexicon root is √ɦɑbus- (sb.) ‘Stiel, Stengel, Schaft, Penis’ with B proven by Hittite. The alternative "or PIE √ɦɑbɑɦus- (?)" = Trad. h2bhus- is mentioned in the upper right corner. Also ote the morphological arrangement of PIE Lexicon: Under √ɦɑbus- the Hittite, from that a derivative √ɦɑbus(·)dɑɦ- with the Celtic items.

[KathTheDragon]

I presume you're referencing Hitt. ḫa-a-pu-(ú)-ša-(aš-š-) there, Jouna? As it happens, that word most likely does not mean "penis" as is usually assumed. It primarily refers to long, thin, hollow objects, hence its readings as the shaft of an arrow, and a reed. In its readings as a body part, it is far more likely to be "shin (bone)", given its attestations (we're looking for the lower of two body parts between the hip and the foot). The proposed etymology therefore does not stand up to scrutiny, and the word is likely to be of substratum origin. As for Celt. *buzdo-, Matasović takes it from PIE *gʷosdʱo- "piece of wood, sprig" which is formally and semantically satisfactory.

[JounaPyysalo]

I presume you're referencing Hitt. ḫa-a-pu-(ú)-ša-(aš-š-) there, Jouna? As it happens, that word most likely does not mean "penis" as is usually assumed. It primarily refers to long, thin, hollow objects, hence its readings as the shaft of an arrow, and a reed. In its readings as a body part, it is far more likely to be "shin (bone)", given its attestations (we're looking for the lower of two body parts between the hip and the foot). The proposed etymology therefore does not stand up to scrutiny, and the word is likely to be of substratum origin. As for Celt. *buzdo-, Matasović takes it from PIE *gʷosdʱo- "piece of wood, sprig" which is formally and semantically satisfactory.

Yes. You find the attested forms with Ctrl+F:ing √ɦɑbus- (sb.) ‘Stiel, Stengel, Schaft, Penis’ in PIE Lexicon.I've read Kloekhorst and the articles discussing this too. Despite that the shift between the meanings is not unusual in the semantic fields of the Indo-European roots. (As "EtDiPC. 85-6" refers to Matasović I am aware of his etymology as well – but not happy with that due to the first /u/ in OGaul. buðð·utto-.

[KathTheDragon]

Despite that the shift between the meanings is not unusual in the semantic fields of the Indo-European roots.

There is every reason to not gloss ḫāpūša(šš)- as "penis", given that in the ritual of Tunnawiya, we find the following 12 body parts, in order: head; throat; ear; shoulder; upper arm; fingers/hand; rib; penis; pelvis; tašku(i)-; ḫāpūša(šš)-; foot. The first six clearly refer to upper-body parts, going from top to bottom. The second six logically follow the same principle, implying that the body part in question lies below the pelvis. As the known word for "penis" indicates, the penis was clearly regarded as being higher up on the body. How then could it also be regarded as being lower? And more to the point, why would it be included twice? Unless you will also deny that ^UZUÚR means "penis"? Furthermore, penises aren't hollow in the same way that arrow shafts and reeds are. The only logical conclusion is that ḫāpūša(šš)- is part of the leg, implying the shin-bone.

[jal]

The only logical conclusion is that ḫāpūša(šš)- is part of the leg, implying the shin-bone.

Maybe they were feminists, and it actually means vagina? :)


JAL

[JounaPyysalo]

Despite that the shift between the meanings is not unusual in the semantic fields of the Indo-European roots.

There is every reason to not gloss ḫāpūša(šš)- as "penis", given that in the ritual of Tunnawiya, we find the following 12 body parts, in order: head; throat; ear; shoulder; upper arm; fingers/hand; rib; penis; pelvis; tašku(i)-; ḫāpūša(šš)-; foot. The first six clearly refer to upper-body parts, going from top to bottom. The second six logically follow the same principle, implying that the body part in question lies below the pelvis. As the known word for "penis" indicates, the penis was clearly regarded as being higher up on the body. How then could it also be regarded as being lower? And more to the point, why would it be included twice? Unless you will also deny that ^UZUÚR means "penis"? Furthermore, penises aren't hollow in the same way that arrow shafts and reeds are. The only logical conclusion is that ḫāpūša(šš)- is part of the leg, implying the shin-bone.

I meant that the semantic fields of the ancient Indo-European words indicate semantic flexibility in their semantic fields: "shaft" means shaft, of course, but it can be used to denote "penis" as well. Note also that the exact meaning of the OGaul. word is not exactly known, i.e. it could mean "penis" as such or something less concrete such as "shaft".

[jal]

I meant that the semantic fields of the ancient Indo-European words indicate semantic flexibility in their semantic fields: "shaft" means shaft, of course, but it can be used to denote "penis" as well. Note also that the exact meaning of the OGaul. word is not exactly known, i.e. it could mean "penis" as such or something less concrete such as "shaft".

Sure, but in this specific case, as Kath pointed out, it doesn't make sense to think it means "penis". That's regardless of "shaft" possibly denoting "penis" *in general*. In this case, it is unlikely to mean that.


JAL

[KathTheDragon]

Re: Celtic *buzd-, it seems I misread Matasović's etymon. He doesn't actually suppose *gʷ, but rather a cluster *gw. The PIE paradigm was then *gwósdʱ- ~ gusdʱ-, leading to Celtic *bozd- ~ guzd-, which was then regularised into buzd-.

[marconatrix]

Re: Celtic *buzd-, it seems I misread Matasović's etymon. He doesn't actually suppose *gʷ, but rather a cluster *gw. The PIE paradigm was then *gwósdʱ- ~ gusdʱ-, leading to Celtic *bozd- ~ guzd-, which was then regularised into buzd-.

The GPC suggests W. both could possibly be cognate with OCS gvozdŭ 'nail, pin'. < IE gwosd^ho- :

http://geiriadur.ac.uk/gpc/gpc.html
(Put 'both' in the search box).

The DIL seems to imply that OI. 'bot' /bod/ may originally have meant 'tail' (the reference to a raven is rather compelling) :

http://edil.qub.ac.uk/dictionary/result ... =edil_2012
(Scroll down to 1 bot and click where it says 'expand all' in red).

And it's probably anyone's guess what the Gaulish word is supposed to mean. There are no real continuous texts in G. only short usually formulaic votive inscriptions, graffiti etc.

So all in all, it's not by any means conclusive that these three words are cognate with one another, let alone something in far off Anatolia from centuries earlier. So how many more of these etymologies are equally poorly supported?

[JounaPyysalo]

Re: Celtic *buzd-, it seems I misread Matasović's etymon. He doesn't actually suppose *gʷ, but rather a cluster *gw. The PIE paradigm was then *gwósdʱ- ~ gusdʱ-, leading to Celtic *bozd- ~ guzd-, which was then regularised into buzd-.

The GPC suggests W. both could possibly be cognate with OCS gvozdŭ 'nail, pin'. < IE gwosd^ho- :

http://geiriadur.ac.uk/gpc/gpc.html
(Put 'both' in the search box).

The DIL seems to imply that OI. 'bot' /bod/ may originally have meant 'tail' (the reference to a raven is rather compelling) :

http://edil.qub.ac.uk/dictionary/result ... =edil_2012
(Scroll down to 1 bot and click where it says 'expand all' in red).

And it's probably anyone's guess what the Gaulish word is supposed to mean. There are no real continuous texts in G. only short usually formulaic votive inscriptions, graffiti etc.

So all in all, it's not by any means conclusive that these three words are cognate with one another, let alone something in far off Anatolia from centuries earlier. So how many more of these etymologies are equally poorly supported?

For the moment I am very very engaged with a couple of articles with little time to anything but that.

However,

1. It is important to note that the meaning of the Gaul. word has been reasonably inferred from the context given in the sources discussed and PIE Lexicon:
http://pielexicon.hum.helsinki.fi/?alpha=ALL

"moni gnatha gabi buððutton imon ‘come, girl, take penis (which is) mine’

Whether buððutton means penis, tail vel sim. this is quite understandable.

Meanwhile sorry for the little pause in discussion, I simply cannot do more at this point.

2. The explanation "Celtic *bozd- ~ guzd-, which was then regularised into buzd-." is not acceptable from the point of view of PIE Lexicon, where only regular explanations are accepted.

Analogy, levelling and all sort of irregularity is indicated in red. An example of this is available in two Greek forms attached to the root (CTRL+F)
PIE √nɑhku- √nɑɦgu- (vb.) ‘biegen, krümmen, neigen’ (sb.) ‘Kuppe, Schlucht’

Jouna

[KathTheDragon]

2. The explanation "Celtic *bozd- ~ guzd-, which was then regularised into buzd-." is not acceptable from the point of view of PIE Lexicon, where only regular explanations are accepted.

Analogy, levelling and all sort of irregularity is indicated in red. An example of this is available in two Greek forms attached to the root (CTRL+F)
PIE √nɑhku- √nɑɦgu- (vb.) ‘biegen, krümmen, neigen’ (sb.) ‘Kuppe, Schlucht’

Jouna

So you refuse to allow analogy any place in your model? If this is case, then your model will never satisfy me, since you're deying a very well-established phenomenon.

[JounaPyysalo]

2. The explanation "Celtic *bozd- ~ guzd-, which was then regularised into buzd-." is not acceptable from the point of view of PIE Lexicon, where only regular explanations are accepted.

Analogy, levelling and all sort of irregularity is indicated in red. An example of this is available in two Greek forms attached to the root (CTRL+F)
PIE √nɑhku- √nɑɦgu- (vb.) ‘biegen, krümmen, neigen’ (sb.) ‘Kuppe, Schlucht’

Jouna

So you refuse to allow analogy any place in your model? If this is case, then your model will never satisfy me, since you're deying a very well-established phenomenon.

There is little doubt that analogy exists. When that cannot be avoided by regular means it becomes visible in the PIE Lexicon desktop (of course de[n]ying that would be just non-sense). There is already one example of a root with analogy among the some 500 roots of PIE Lexicon as you can confirm if you CTRL+F the items
PIE √nɑhku- √nɑɦgu- (vb.) ‘biegen, krümmen, neigen’ (sb.) ‘Kuppe, Schlucht’
in the PIE Lexicon desktop:
http://pielexicon.hum.helsinki.fi/?alpha=ALL

There, as you can see the two Doric forms Gr. νενώπη- and Gr. προνωπήσ- appear in red π...

However, analogy is a very marginal phenomenon in comparison to the regular ones so this is hardly a big deal...

Jouna

[KathTheDragon]

However, analogy is a very marginal phenomenon in comparison to the regular ones so this is hardly a big deal...

I disagree. Analogy is a very pervasive phenomenon. Just take a look at the history of strong verbs in English.

[JounaPyysalo]

However, analogy is a very marginal phenomenon in comparison to the regular ones so this is hardly a big deal...

I disagree. Analogy is a very pervasive phenomenon. Just take a look at the history of strong verbs in English.

I had the most ancient IE languages in my mind, of course, an insignificant residue of analogy (or irregularity in general) appearing there.

Also, the "analogy" in the later stages of the languages is usually simply a series of successive losses of bases, the functions of which are taken over by the remaining (ever lessening) bases of the languages...

[hwhatting]

I had the most ancient IE languages in my mind, of course, an insignificant residue of analogy (or irregularity in general) appearing there.

Also, the "analogy" in the later stages of the languages is usually simply a series of successive losses of bases, the functions of which are taken over by the remaining (ever lessening) bases of the languages...

There is no good reason to assume that PIE worked fundamentally in a different way from the later attested languages. And analogy doesn't happen just due to a "lessening number of bases" (by which I assume you mean stem / inflection types or something like that?); it's just that less productive or obscure paradigms are influenced by more salient and productive paradigms. This is no different in PIE than in other languages. It is well known, e.g., that root verbs, root nouns, and heteroclitic nouns are an older and less productive layer than, say, thematic nouns and verbs (so PIE had differences between more and less productive inflection classes, which is sufficient forr analogy to arise), that there were two different ways of inflecting i- and u-stems (one "consonantal" with e.g. Gen. sg. *-yos, and one "vocalic" with Gen. sg. *-eys) and one reason why the relationship between stress and ablaut is so complicated is the fact that different patterns influenced each by analogy already in PIE.
What your System produces are "transponates", back-projections of attested forms into PIE, but you seem not to care much on how they fit into the morphological structures and ablaut patterns that have been reconstructed - if the outcome is that *es- had present tense plural forms *in *es-, *s-, and *os-, despite the observation that, for other athematic verbs the pattern is to have only zero grade in the plural, you seem to just shrug that off. So you elevate your "two witnesses" rule above considerations of the morphological system of PIE. That is your choice, but it's not the only choice available.

[KathTheDragon]

However, analogy is a very marginal phenomenon in comparison to the regular ones so this is hardly a big deal...

I disagree. Analogy is a very pervasive phenomenon. Just take a look at the history of strong verbs in English.

I had the most ancient IE languages in my mind, of course, an insignificant residue of analogy (or irregularity in general) appearing there.

Also, the "analogy" in the later stages of the languages is usually simply a series of successive losses of bases, the functions of which are taken over by the remaining (ever lessening) bases of the languages...

Well, if you want to talk about "ancient IE languages", let's trace the strong verbs all the way back to PIE itself, shall we?

One major analogy is the loss of reduplication of the PIE perfect, analogical to the unreduplicated presents (except in the class VII verbs, which we'll come to later) and probably advanced by those verbs which became vowel-initial in Germanic. Another is the spread of the ablauting preterite from those verbs where it was inherited, to all underived verbs. The root vowel *ē in classes 4 and 5 must be analogical, probably on laryngeal-initial verbs. The ablaut of class 6 must also have been analogically remodelled, probably also on laryngeal-initial roots. Class 7 is more interesting, due to the varied treatment. Gothic has generalised the reduplication vowel ai from breaking contexts, and the strong stem throughout the paradigm. In Northwest Germanic, all class 7 preterite plurals deleted their root vowel, and simplified illegal clusters that resulted. This created an apparently unreduplicated plural with *e vocalism, and this stem was extended to the singular. This produced an a::e ablaut schema, which was extended beyond those verbs where it was proper, and also spawned an ā::ē ablaut in verbs with long-vowels. Several more analogies affected the verba pura. Returning to all strong verbs, grammatischer Wechsel had been partly eliminated by the time of Old English. By modern English, many strong verbs have been made weak, and I recall that at least one originally weak verb has been made strong by lexical analogy.

Hardly insignificant.

[JounaPyysalo]

I had the most ancient IE languages in my mind, of course, an insignificant residue of analogy (or irregularity in general) appearing there.

Also, the "analogy" in the later stages of the languages is usually simply a series of successive losses of bases, the functions of which are taken over by the remaining (ever lessening) bases of the languages...

There is no good reason to assume that PIE worked fundamentally in a different way from the later attested languages. And analogy doesn't happen just due to a "lessening number of bases" (by which I assume you mean stem / inflection types or something like that?); it's just that less productive or obscure paradigms are influenced by more salient and productive paradigms. This is no different in PIE than in other languages. It is well known, e.g., that root verbs, root nouns, and heteroclitic nouns are an older and less productive layer than, say, thematic nouns and verbs (so PIE had differences between more and less productive inflection classes, which is sufficient forr analogy to arise), that there were two different ways of inflecting i- and u-stems (one "consonantal" with e.g. Gen. sg. *-yos, and one "vocalic" with Gen. sg. *-eys) and one reason why the relationship between stress and ablaut is so complicated is the fact that different patterns influenced each by analogy already in PIE.
What your System produces are "transponates", back-projections of attested forms into PIE, but you seem not to care much on how they fit into the morphological structures and ablaut patterns that have been reconstructed - if the outcome is that *es- had present tense plural forms *in *es-, *s-, and *os-, despite the observation that, for other athematic verbs the pattern is to have only zero grade in the plural, you seem to just shrug that off. So you elevate your "two witnesses" rule above considerations of the morphological system of PIE. That is your choice, but it's not the only choice available.

JOUNA: A couple of points here:
1. Reconstructions, when correctly made on the basis of the comparative method are back-projections i.e. re+constructions: What once existed is re-created on the basis of comparison. The reason for that is, of course, the fundamental fact that the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European is a comparative business par excellence, only the comparison of the languages leading to the true protolanguage as it once was. The "two witnesses" rule actually dates back to Fick's rule, but it was already used before that by Rask and Bopp already, who spoke of the systematic correspondences between the letters (i.e. phonemes) of the languages.
2. PIE had numerous paradigms, thematic and athematic and it should not be taken warranted that these were inherited as such (a common underlying deep-level assumption with no counterpart in reality). It can be easily seen on the basis of Hittite that the "athematic" verbs with singular in *e took a plural in *o. Thus not only es·zi : asanzi but ses·zi : sas·anzi; Nothing in the data proves or falsifies the idea that the Hittite paradigms such as these are inherited or not. It is equally possible that the Hittite paradigm is suppletive, consisting of stems originally belonging to two paradigms. What matters is that it is absolutely certain that the Hitt. as·anzi [3pl] does certainly not represent a zero grade, because the stem Hitt. as- = CLu. as- = OPr. as- = Northumbr. ar·on [3pl] all imply PIE *os-. Indo-European linguistics is an empirical science that derives its true (verified) propositions directly from the data, not from erroneous a priori statements such as "the observation that, for other athematic verbs the pattern is to have only zero grade in the plural". Clearly that sort of pattern is incorrect, because the stem PIE *os- (Hitt. as- = CLu. as- = OPr. as- = Northumbr. ar·on [3pl]) could take both singular and plural endings in PIE.
3. (I am still to write a bundle of articles, so my apologies for the delayed articles – which may continue in the future as well. However, I am eager to return into the discussion whenever with a couple of extra minutes to comment)

[JounaPyysalo]

However, analogy is a very marginal phenomenon in comparison to the regular ones so this is hardly a big deal...

I disagree. Analogy is a very pervasive phenomenon. Just take a look at the history of strong verbs in English.

I had the most ancient IE languages in my mind, of course, an insignificant residue of analogy (or irregularity in general) appearing there.

Also, the "analogy" in the later stages of the languages is usually simply a series of successive losses of bases, the functions of which are taken over by the remaining (ever lessening) bases of the languages...

Well, if you want to talk about "ancient IE languages", let's trace the strong verbs all the way back to PIE itself, shall we?

One major analogy is the loss of reduplication of the PIE perfect, analogical to the unreduplicated presents (except in the class VII verbs, which we'll come to later) and probably advanced by those verbs which became vowel-initial in Germanic. Another is the spread of the ablauting preterite from those verbs where it was inherited, to all underived verbs. The root vowel *ē in classes 4 and 5 must be analogical, probably on laryngeal-initial verbs. The ablaut of class 6 must also have been analogically remodelled, probably also on laryngeal-initial roots. Class 7 is more interesting, due to the varied treatment. Gothic has generalised the reduplication vowel ai from breaking contexts, and the strong stem throughout the paradigm. In Northwest Germanic, all class 7 preterite plurals deleted their root vowel, and simplified illegal clusters that resulted. This created an apparently unreduplicated plural with *e vocalism, and this stem was extended to the singular. This produced an a::e ablaut schema, which was extended beyond those verbs where it was proper, and also spawned an ā::ē ablaut in verbs with long-vowels. Several more analogies affected the verba pura. Returning to all strong verbs, grammatischer Wechsel had been partly eliminated by the time of Old English. By modern English, many strong verbs have been made weak, and I recall that at least one originally weak verb has been made strong by lexical analogy.

Hardly insignificant.

JOUNA: I already wrote this with more length in the response to hwhatting (directly above) so
1. I simply ask here you the essential question: What makes you believe that the classes of verbs (or paradigms in general) were directly inherited, instead of being, say, recomposed?
2. Ctrl+F √kɑheuuɑh- in PIE Lexicon full data page. There you encounter OEng. heōw-, a long grade preterite in *ē with the length (secondarily shortened by Osthoff's Law) confirmed original by its identity with TochB. śauw-. The comparative method does not claim that this or that is analogy or irregular on a priori basis, but attempts to identify Indo-European cognates in order to determine at least those formations that are confirmed genuine by means of "two witnesses" at least (in this case PIE *kɑhēuu̯ɑh- is original since it yields both TochB. śauw- = OEng. heōw- regularly.
3. Also for you – and others – please accept my apologies for my delayed replies: I am with a "hopeless" bundle of articles and can afford very little time for the moment, but will response and continue the discussion when able to do that.

[jal]

Jouna, could you please please please please learn to use quotes like the rest of us? In the posts above, you are even deliberately enclosing your own words in quote tags! Please, don't! Thanks.


JAL

[2+3 clusivity]

This might help. As I understand the culture here, the following apply --

For your own text. Do not put it in quotes -- unless you are quoting your own prior message.

For someone else's message, do the following. Go into the reply screen. (1) Place the blinking bar in the reply editor where you would like the quote to appear, (2) scroll down to the message you want to quote, (3) highlight the text you wish to quote in another's message, (4) while that text is still highlight, select the quote button at the top of their message, and (5) confirm that the quoted text appeared properly.

If you want to snip parts of the others quote (within reason), use ellipses (" . . . ") to remove parts of sentences or multiple sentences within a paragraph. To remove paragraph or larger chunks, use tripled stars (" * * * "). Of course, don't edit so as to remove the original meaning of the quote or otherwise misquote the other.

Also --

Code: Select all

[quote="NAME"] . . .[/quote]

Quotes with a name, but

Code: Select all

[quote] . . .[/quote]

Does not.

[sangi39]

And let's have a practical example for a quick demonstration of what happens.

This:

Code: Select all

[quote="Jal"]
[quote="Jouna"]
Something Jouna has written
[/quote]
Jal's response to the thing Jouna has written
[/quote]
Jouna's reply to Jal's reply

Would become this:

Something Jouna has written

Jal's response to the thing Jouna has written

Jouna's reply to Jal's reply

[sangi39]

You can also break up text so that you don't have to reply to each point in one block of text at the end. Let's say that Jal's reply comes in 5 parts. You can then do the following:

Code: Select all

[quote="Jal"]
Part 1 of Jal's response
[/quote]

Jouna's reply to part one

[quote="Jal"]
Part 2 of Jal's response
[/quote]

Jouna's reply to part 2

[quote="Jal"]
Part 3 of Jal's response
[/quote]

Jouna's reply to part 3

[quote="Jal"]
Part 4 of Jal's response
[/quote]

Jouna's reply to part 4

[quote="Jal"]
Part 5 of Jal's response
[/quote]

Jouna's reply to part 5

Which becomes:

Part 1 of Jal's response

Jouna's reply to part one

Part 2 of Jal's response

Jouna's reply to part 2

Part 3 of Jal's response

Jouna's reply to part 3

Part 4 of Jal's response

Jouna's reply to part 4

Part 5 of Jal's response

Jouna's reply to part 5

--------------------------------------------------

This is what I think Jouna's been trying to do before, but he's not been putting the end quote tag in the right place, so his replies get buried in with the text he's quoting.

[JounaPyysalo]

@ Jal, 2+3 clusivity & sangi39

I've been (and still am) under enormous pressure due to the deadlines of the articles, therefore barely having time to comment, but absolutely not with seconds it would take to learn how to use the editor.

But I'll follow your instructions next time commenting.

Thank you very much for your instructions, I appreciate.

Jouna

[WeepingElf]

@ Jal, 2+3 clusivity & sangi39

I've been (and still am) under enormous pressure due to the deadlines of the articles, therefore barely having time to comment, but absolutely not with seconds it would take to learn how to use the editor.

If your deadline pressure isn't bad enough to keep you from discussing your ideas with us, how is it bad enough to keep you from learning how to use quote tags?

Or are you referring to the pressure effected by the board forgetting that you are logged in while you are writing a long post? Admittedly, the login cookies here go bad pretty fast, so one has rather little time finishing one's posts. But there are two ways around that:

1. Compose your reply in an external text editor, and log in here, copy and paste it into the edit window when you are done.

2. Hit "Preview" often. Keeps the cookie fresh.

Still, I don't see how this kind of pressure leads to mishandling quote tags, especially to the insertion of quote tags that are simply superfluous and shouldn't be there.

But I'll follow your instructions next time commenting.

Thank you very much for your instructions, I appreciate.

And thank you in advance for heeding them.

[KathTheDragon]

I had the most ancient IE languages in my mind, of course, an insignificant residue of analogy (or irregularity in general) appearing there.

Also, the "analogy" in the later stages of the languages is usually simply a series of successive losses of bases, the functions of which are taken over by the remaining (ever lessening) bases of the languages...

There is no good reason to assume that PIE worked fundamentally in a different way from the later attested languages. And analogy doesn't happen just due to a "lessening number of bases" (by which I assume you mean stem / inflection types or something like that?); it's just that less productive or obscure paradigms are influenced by more salient and productive paradigms. This is no different in PIE than in other languages. It is well known, e.g., that root verbs, root nouns, and heteroclitic nouns are an older and less productive layer than, say, thematic nouns and verbs (so PIE had differences between more and less productive inflection classes, which is sufficient forr analogy to arise), that there were two different ways of inflecting i- and u-stems (one "consonantal" with e.g. Gen. sg. *-yos, and one "vocalic" with Gen. sg. *-eys) and one reason why the relationship between stress and ablaut is so complicated is the fact that different patterns influenced each by analogy already in PIE.
What your System produces are "transponates", back-projections of attested forms into PIE, but you seem not to care much on how they fit into the morphological structures and ablaut patterns that have been reconstructed - if the outcome is that *es- had present tense plural forms *in *es-, *s-, and *os-, despite the observation that, for other athematic verbs the pattern is to have only zero grade in the plural, you seem to just shrug that off. So you elevate your "two witnesses" rule above considerations of the morphological system of PIE. That is your choice, but it's not the only choice available.

A couple of points here:
1. Reconstructions, when correctly made on the basis of the comparative method are back-projections i.e. re+constructions: What once existed is re-created on the basis of comparison. The reason for that is, of course, the fundamental fact that the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European is a comparative business par excellence, only the comparison of the languages leading to the true protolanguage as it once was. The "two witnesses" rule actually dates back to Fick's rule, but it was already used before that by Rask and Bopp already, who spoke of the systematic correspondences between the letters (i.e. phonemes) of the languages.
2. PIE had numerous paradigms, thematic and athematic and it should not be taken warranted that these were inherited as such (a common underlying deep-level assumption with no counterpart in reality). It can be easily seen on the basis of Hittite that the "athematic" verbs with singular in *e took a plural in *o. Thus not only es·zi : asanzi but ses·zi : sas·anzi; Nothing in the data proves or falsifies the idea that the Hittite paradigms such as these are inherited or not. It is equally possible that the Hittite paradigm is suppletive, consisting of stems originally belonging to two paradigms. What matters is that it is absolutely certain that the Hitt. as·anzi [3pl] does certainly not represent a zero grade, because the stem Hitt. as- = CLu. as- = OPr. as- = Northumbr. ar·on [3pl] all imply PIE *os-. Indo-European linguistics is an empirical science that derives its true (verified) propositions directly from the data, not from erroneous a priori statements such as "the observation that, for other athematic verbs the pattern is to have only zero grade in the plural". Clearly that sort of pattern is incorrect, because the stem PIE *os- (Hitt. as- = CLu. as- = OPr. as- = Northumbr. ar·on [3pl]) could take both singular and plural endings in PIE.
3. (I am still to write a bundle of articles, so my apologies for the delayed articles – which may continue in the future as well. However, I am eager to return into the discussion whenever with a couple of extra minutes to comment)

You keep citing Northumbrian aron (= Mercian earun). The verb this form comes from is a preterite-present as shown by its 2sg Merc. earþ, North. arþ, and the preterite-presents as a class descend from the PIE perfect, which is well-known to have had an o-grade alternant. So this form proves nothing. The normal 3pl of "to be", however, was sind(on), which has an irrefutable zero-grade. I am sorry that you don't want to hear this, but there can be no doubt that the Hittite plural stem as- must reflect the zero-grade somehow.

I already wrote this with more length in the response to hwhatting (directly above) so
1. I simply ask here you the essential question: What makes you believe that the classes of verbs (or paradigms in general) were directly inherited, instead of being, say, recomposed?
2. Ctrl+F √kɑheuuɑh- in PIE Lexicon full data page. There you encounter OEng. heōw-, a long grade preterite in *ē with the length (secondarily shortened by Osthoff's Law) confirmed original by its identity with TochB. śauw-. The comparative method does not claim that this or that is analogy or irregular on a priori basis, but attempts to identify Indo-European cognates in order to determine at least those formations that are confirmed genuine by means of "two witnesses" at least (in this case PIE *kɑhēuu̯ɑh- is original since it yields both TochB. śauw- = OEng. heōw- regularly.
3. Also for you – and others – please accept my apologies for my delayed replies: I am with a "hopeless" bundle of articles and can afford very little time for the moment, but will response and continue the discussion when able to do that.

For starters, is it not you claiming direct inheritence, and I claiming later restructuring?

A survey of my reference material turned up one Old English verb with a preterite even remotely approaching the one you gave, hēawan 'strike; chop', with a preterite hēow. However, no Tocharian śauw- turned up when I looked through IE verbs from the root. Please cite words properly in the future. How am I supposed to reply to you when I don't even know what you're talking about?