The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

[hwhatting]

That seems like a fairly plausible explanation for the origin of the thematic neuter nom./acc. sg. *-óm ending, but I don't see why such a morpheme might be suffixed to personal pronouns.

As I said, the idea is that the suffix was polysemic, with its use in the pronouns being for emphasis. OTOH, its use in Indo-Iranian is much later than its integration into the PIE noun paradigm, so that may well be a different suffix.

A personal pronoun coming from a phrase meaning "I am here"? Sounds fishy to me; I'd like to see if there are any attested examples of such a development. Also, if Skt ahám is from an athematic verb ending in *-mi, wouldn't we expect to see some trace of the *-i?

If it's old enough, it could have been petrified into a pronoun before the "primary" - "secondary" opposition was formed by adding /i/ to form the present tense endings. But I don't like the derivation from a verb much either.

The nom. 1du. vā́m could also reflect the same ending if it's from PIE *we + *-Hóm, with vowel contraction. Likewise the accusative forms mā́m (1sg.) āvā́m (1du.), tvā́m (2sg.), yuvā́m (2du.) could reflect the same ending, added to Ringe's reconstructed forms *m̥mé, *n̥h₃mé, *twé and *uh₃wé (with some stem remodelling too in the 1sg. and 2du.). You might be able to alternatively explain the endings of the acc. sg. forms as coming from a-stem acc. sg. *-am (masculine/neuter), *-ām (feminine), just as the -ān in acc. 1pl. asmā́n and acc. 2pl. yuṣmā́n is probably just the a-stem acc. pl. ending. But, glancing at Wikipedia, it doesn't look like -ām is an acc. du. ending in any nominal stem class, so I don't know how else the endings of these accusative dual forms can be explained.

You're probbly right about Nom. 1st Du; it's the same process like with the other nominative forms. On the accusative, I think it went as follows - there were emphatic / stressed lengthened equivalents to the short forms with /e/ already in (late) PIE (s. Latin me:, te:), and then the normal accusative /m/ was added to them. My understanding of the Dual is that it originally didn't distinguish Nom. and Acc. at all, so the /-m/ is just a Post-PIE import from the singular.

(If anybody knows of a good resource that could help me with IE personal pronouns, I'd much appreciate it... the only things I have to refer to here are the very cursory remarks made by Ringe [2006], who says I should look at Katz [1998] if I want more detail, except I don't have that book, and the basic overview in Fortson [2004].)

Kloekhorst gives an overview of his reconstructions in his Hittite Etymplogical Dictionary, p. 135 ff. (PDF here.) On the whole, there are still significant differences in opinion on the details, and I'd recommend to read several accounts in order not to be captured by one school's interpretation.

I've also read that PIE didn't have plural caseforms of cases other than N A D - is that true?

That would have to be NAGD, as all old IE languages, including Anatolian, attest gen. pl. -om. This is a statement that has been made concerning the stage of PIE before Anatolian split off; I personally find it convincing. Concerning Post-Anatolian PIE, a big group of core languages excluding Anatolian (I don't know about Tocharian) also shares developments like the Loc. Pl. -su and the differentiation of Dat. Pl. vs. Instr. Pl. based on something like *-b^ho-/-mo- vs. *-b^hi-/-mi- for the non-o-stems and an Instr. Pl. *-oHis in the o-stems. There are some regional developments like the use of /m/ for Dat. Instr. Pl. in Balto-Slavic and Germanic vs. /b^h/ in the other families.

[KathTheDragon]

Actually, that can be expanded to NAGDI - This paper by Jasanoff is an account of the thematic instrumental plural ending *-ōis, and as part of the discussion, the caseforms in *-bʰ-/-m-, which are shown to be ultimately secondary to the inherited endings (although I saw somewhere a different account of the *-m- in Germano-Balto-Slavic that's more convincing than Jasanoff's; sadly I don't have it to hand)

Edit: apparently the locative plural is attested in Anatolian, forming multiplicative numerals, cf. HLuw. tara/i-su-u "three times", Mil. trisu "thrice", being directly comparable to Skt. loc.pl. triṣú, Lith. trisù "the three of them"

[Chagen]

My copy of Indo-European Language and Culture by Benjamin W. Fortson IV states on page 95 that Indo-Europeanists posit that PIE had an additional "voice" along with the traditional Middle and Active; specifically, a Stative, with the endings traditionally considered Middle, the Middle itself using slightly different endings. Is this a plausible position or just a fringe theory? I'm working on an apost lang right now and am thinking of using that, probably by turning the middle into a passive and then using the Stative as something (Preterite? Perfect?)

Also is there a dictionary of PIE roots/words, because I need to look them up more and more to work on this language and my books aren't sufficient.

[KathTheDragon]

The notion that PIE had a separate "stative" voice is motivated by the difference between the 3sg middle endings *-o and *-to. All other endings have only one variant in the middle. This can, however, be explained differently from needing to assume a third voice - the dental ending is a renewal of the older dentalless ending. As is apparently the case with renewals of endings, the productive middle meanings were assigned to the new dental ending, while the intransitive and impersonal functions were assigned to the old dentalless ending. This difference can still be observed in Hittite, where impersonal middles exclusively use -ā(ri).

As for a dictionary, the best thing I know of is the Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European by Mallory and Adams. Alternatively, I still have a spreadsheet of PIE words compiled from a lot of sources by Morrígan which I can send to you.

[Chagen]

Hm. The idea of resurrecting a dead Stative conjugation is interesting, but it sounds like that wouldn't really be plausible. I would like that spreadsheet too.

[Zaarin]

As for a dictionary, the best thing I know of is the Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European by Mallory and Adams. Alternatively, I still have a spreadsheet of PIE words compiled from a lot of sources by Morrígan which I can send to you.

I'm also working on an a posteriori IE lang and would be very interested in that spreadsheet, if it's not too much trouble.

[KathTheDragon]

Here you go!

[Zaarin]

Here you go!

Thanks!

[hwhatting]

Stative can have different meanings in PIE studies. There is also an interpretation of the IE material that assumes that PIE originally had a distinction active vs.stative, with the stative being the source of both the middle and the perfect.

[KathTheDragon]

Tropylium has written an interesting blog post about Anatolian and PIE vowels. The bottom line: The Anatolian data points at a system like *i *e *ɜ *a *u instead of the traditionally reconstructed *i *e *a *o *u for Proto-Anatolian, and he points out that the former may be more archaic than the latter. Now, if Early PIE had the "quincunx" system (as I call it: four vowels in the corners of the vowel space, and one in the middle) reconstructed by Tropylium, the feature that distinguished *h3 from *h2 wouldn't have been labialization, and the whole idea that the three laryngeals were counterparts of the three velar stop series would go out of the window. However, Hyllested has found hints at a connection between PIE laryngeals and Proto-Uralic vowel qualities that supports the velar series idea, and therefore indirectly points at the traditional system in Early PIE.

Going back to this, it's struck me that one possible consequence of this reconstruction is that, if you assume the "pre-colouring" value of *e/a/o to have been something in the vicinity of [ä], then *h₂ need not have had colouring effects in the same way as *h₃. The implied scenario goes something like this. The original low vowel *a is retracted to *ɑ next to *h₃ (phonetically then something like /χ/ or /ħ/), and then (perhaps in response to this allophone) generally fronted to *æ, except next to *h₂. *h₁ is of course neutral to all this. The allophone *a is then raised to make it more distinct to the other two low vowels in the system.

[Alces]

I'm trying to understand Byrd's translation of Schleicher's fable, and I'm puzzled by the word *bʰórom which appears in the sentence "só gʷr̥hₓúm u̯óǵʰom u̯eǵʰed; só méǵh₂m̥ bʰórom; só dʰǵʰémonm̥ h₂ṓḱu bʰered."

The first and third clauses are simple; *u̯eǵʰed and *bʰered are 3sg. past active indicatives agreeing with the 3sg. subjects (*só in both sentences). I would have expected the second clause to be parallel: "só méǵh₂m̥ bʰered", meaning 'that one carrying something big'. But in place of *bʰered we have *bʰórom, with o-grade and a different ending. This must be a participle of some sort, I think---*-om could be the thematic verbal 1sg. past active indicative ending, but the subject isn't first-person in this clause, and in any case my understanding is that a finite verb in this position would be deaccented (like the verbs in the other two clauses). But it's not an nt-participle or any other sort of participle that I'm familiar with. Also, if it is a participle, then shouldn't it take the animate nom. sg. ending *-os so that it agrees with *só?

If we look at earlier translations like Adams', the plot thickens: the finite verbs in the first and second clauses are replaced with nt-participles: "h₁oinom ghe gʷr̥hₓúm u̯óĝhom u̯éĝhontm̥ h₁oinom-kʷe méĝhₐm bhórom, h₁oinom-kʷe ĝhménm̥ hₓṓk̂u bhérontm̥". But *bhórom is left unchanged (aside from orthographic details). Maybe it isn't a participle, then? But in that case I have no idea what it is.

[hwhatting]

*bʰórom is a noun meaning "load":

one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly

(the English translation is on the Wikipedia page about Schleicher's fable).
The nominative would be *bʰóros - it's a frequent noun formation, an o-stem with o-grade in the accented root. This Formation is used both for action nouns and for nouns denoting the result or object of an action; so, from *bʰer- "carry" => "carrying", "that what is carried" => "load". The word is attested with the meaning "load" in Vedic; other languages and the range of meanings in Indo-Iranian and Vedi itself indicate that it still had the wider meaning "carrying, object of carrying" in PIE.

[Alces]

Oh, right! See, I did look at the translation, but I was thinking of the whole phrase "big load" as the translation of the single word *méǵh₂m̥. This, I guess, is why word-by-word glosses are helpful I was also thrown off by the ellipsis of *bʰered 'carrying' in that clause (which I'm guessing occurs because it's shared with the next clause?), which seems to be impermissible in English (even if you swap the orders of the last two clauses). If I'd paid more attention to Schleicher's German translation I might have been able to work it out, because the ellipsis is preserved there ("das [einen] schweren wagen fahrend, das [eine] groſse last, das [einen] menschen schnell tragend").

[Chagen]

Are there any examples of nasal-infix presents whose roots ended in either /w/ or /j/? In my apost lang if such roots exist, then they would split off into a separate athematic class from the other nasal-infix presents (which instead innovated a new class, from the ones which ended in a laryngeal, which uses a zero-grade root and suffixes -ā in the singular and -ī in the dual and plural; basically, Sanskrit's ninth class).

[hwhatting]

Are there any examples of nasal-infix presents whose roots ended in either /w/ or /j/?

Yes. LIV reconstructs nasal presents for *k'ley-, *k'lew-, *sH3ey-.

[Chagen]

Only three, huh? I'll keep them as a distinct subclass but this language has literally 20 different verb classes at this point. I think I'm gonna have to run some analogy and simplification through the verbal system or it's gonna be a complete mess.

[KathTheDragon]

PIE also had a distinct class of presents with a suffix *-néw- ~ *-nw-, which are descriptively identical to a nasal-infix present to a *w-suffixed root.

[KathTheDragon]

Going back to the question of *wR- roots, it occurred to me that Tropylium's suggestion that PIE may have had a fourth laryngeal *xʷ, ancestral to Anatolian *xʷ and non-Anatolian *h₂w, might be able to explain where these roots got their initial cluster - namely, *xʷR- > *(h₂)wR-. This has the advantage of being independent from the nature of any root-final obstruent, and we do indeed see all three. For the roots in *mR-, I think my suggestion of dissimilation (from earlier *wR- due to *w in the coda) is still likely.

[Zju]

Does the ending *-or exist in PIE, either as ablaut variant of *-er or as independent ending, and if it does, what does it mean?

[hwhatting]

Does the ending *-or exist in PIE, either as ablaut variant of *-er or as independent ending, and if it does, what does it mean?

Depends on which model of PIE you follow. In some models there is an assumption that there was an impersonal / 3rd person plural ending *-r or *-or that later ended up as 3rd Person plural in the perfect and also is behind the passive 3rd person endings *-(n)tor that show up in some IE languages.
You can also get an "ending" *-or as voc. sg. of some consonsonant stem nouns, but there it is strictly speaking an ablaut variant of the stem, not an ending (I'm talking about e.g. r-stems as second element of compounds, e.g. *H1su-pH2to:r, Voc. Sg. H1su-pH2tor => Greek eupato:r).

[KathTheDragon]

Does the ending *-or exist in PIE, either as ablaut variant of *-er or as independent ending, and if it does, what does it mean?

The 3sg middle primary (= present) ending. There is no ending *-er, and the closest is *-ēr, the old 3pl perfect ending, but this is not related in any way to *-or.

[Zju]

Does the ending *-or exist in PIE, either as ablaut variant of *-er or as independent ending, and if it does, what does it mean?

The 3sg middle primary (= present) ending. There is no ending *-er, and the closest is *-ēr, the old 3pl perfect ending, but this is not related in any way to *-or.

Wasn't *-er a variant of the contrastive suffix *-ter?

[KathTheDragon]

That's a suffix, not an ending.

[Zju]

I meant to say any post-root morpheme.

[KathTheDragon]

In that case, yes, there's that too. Though, to my knowledge, it never appears in o-grade.