The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by KathTheDragon »

Taking the laryngeals as former uvular stops, while ingenious, only works in a two-tectal model, which at present I don't accept. The so-called evidence against a series of plain velars is IMO unconvincing, as AFAICT it amounts to "well the other two series neutralise to plain velars in a few places, so all plain velars must be the result of neutralisation" and that just doesn't follow.

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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by WeepingElf »

It works if one assumes that uvulars and front vowels never occurred next to each other in PIE0 (the pre-GVC stage) - not a particularly unusual constraint as uvulars tend to back vowels. Perhaps the front vowels preceding or following uvulars were backed, explaining why there was no "front uvular" in the later stages, also explaining why *h2 was the most common laryngeal - wherever a front vowel was next to PIE0 *q, it became a back unrounded vowel.

So things may have gone like this: in PIE0 there would have been a velar stop series *k *k' *g and a single uvular stop *q. At that point, there were no velar or uvular fricatives; the only fricatives in the language were the alveolar sibilant *s and glottal *h. The velars could occur next to all vowels, but *q only next to back vowels because it backed adjacent front vowels. This constraint meant that when the GVC hit home, the velar series split into three as we know them from later stages of PIE, but *q split only into two - labialized *qw next to a rounded vowel and unlabialized *q everywhere else. These uvular stops became fricatives by the time of PIE2, namely *χ = *h2 and *χw = *h3. *h1 is the glottal fricative *h. The rest goes as in the handbooks.

Alternatively, one could assume that there was a "front uvular", but merged with the voiceless front velar stop (PIE3 *ḱ). But I think the version I laid out above is more plausible, and does a better job of explaining the high frequency of *h2.
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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by KathTheDragon »

I meant that more as in since the "plain velars" would have to have been further back than velar, there's no room for the "pre-laryngeal" uvular stops as well.

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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by hwhatting »

KathTheDragon wrote: Why people always insist on aligning the arbitrary numbering of the laryngeals to the front-back dimension of PoA is utterly beyond me
Due to the colouring. (h1 = e, h2 = a, h3 = o). Agreed, there are other solutions to that (i.a. h1 being actually non-colouring), but it's tempting.
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How do you get to 7% here? My result would be 9/108 = 8.33%, but maybe I'm approaching that the wrong way?
Nortaneous wrote:
WeepingElf wrote: 1. *h2 is much more common than an unlabialized back velar fricative would be expected to be.
2. Why do velar fricatives colour *e, but not velar stops?
3. Why is *h1 lost in Hittite?
Reconstructing uvular stops for *h2 *h3 would answer this, although obviously it isn't compatible with *h3 not being rounded, since then there'd be nothing to distinguish them. Unless *h3 was /R/ (voiced uvular stops are incredibly rare and tend to fricate essentially immediately, so I don't think reconstructing G\ makes sense) or something, but then you have to explain why they had different coloring effects.

1. According to Wikipedia's chart of consonant frequencies in Arabic roots, /q/ is the ninth most common consonant, after /r w l m n b f ʕ/. It's more common than /k/ or /dʒ/ < /g/. *h2 seems pretty common in PIE.

2. Velar fricatives color *e because they were in fact uvular plosives, which are known to color vowels.

3. *h1 is lost in Hittite because it was some sort of glottal, and glottals are particularly easily lost.
If I read Kloekhorst (Hittite Etymological Dictionary) correctly, he assumes that h1 is represented as a glottal stop in Proto-Anatolian, which is then lost in some, but not all positions in Hittite (e.g. it is kept word-initially). The other laryngeals also show up as glottal stop in some positions (e.g. Vh3V, Vh1V > V?V in Proto-Anatolian and early Old Hittite > VV in late OH, while VH2V > VhV). I don’t know whether that’s still his position; I also don’t know how widely shared his view is that certain uses of vowel signs in Hittite represent not vocalisations of laryngeals, but are attempts to write glottal stops.
KathTheDragon wrote:I meant that more as in since the "plain velars" would have to have been further back than velar, there's no room for the "pre-laryngeal" uvular stops as well.
It's frequently assumed but not really neccessary that the laryngeals were stops at some point. My understanding is that Semitic has maintained pharyngeals and laryngeals for millennia, so why shouldn't they have existed already in the ancestor stages of the three-tectal PIE that we know?
And I know it's tempting to put the laryngeals into one system with the tectals, but there's no reason why it has to be that way, and in my view that approach creates more problems than it solves.

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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by WeepingElf »

hwhatting wrote:And I know it's tempting to put the laryngeals into one system with the tectals, but there's no reason why it has to be that way, and in my view that approach creates more problems than it solves.
This is also what I have arrived at by now. Interpreting the laryngeals as fricative members of the three velar series is tempting, mainly due to their threeness, and the seeming correspondence between their vowel-colouring effects and the secondary articulations of the stops, but as we have found in this discussion, it throws up more problems than it solves: the unexpected high frequency of *h2, the loss of *h1 in Hittite while the other two are preserved, the lack of vowel-colouring effects of the velar stops. We really ought to abandon that notion.

So I think that *h1 was */h/, thus having nothing to do with velar stops. What regards the difference between *h2 and *h3, it depends on what originally was the difference between *a and *o. I still do not understand Kath's scepticism against *o having been rounded in PIE3 (and probably already in PIE2), there is plenty of evidence in favour of *o being rounded from the daughter languages. So, I consider it likely that *h3=*h2w, whatever *h2 may have been; we know that it was a fricative (judging by its phonotactics), and that it turned an adjacent open front vowel into an open back vowel. This points at a uvular or pharyngeal fricative, as such fricatives are known to exert such influence on vowels.

A uvular fricative may in turn have been a development from an earlier uvular stop *q, and its labialized counterpart accordingly from a labialized uvular stop *qw. I have already laid out yesterday what may have been the reason that there was no palatalized uvular stop - uvular stops backed adjacent front vowels (try to say [qe] or [qi], and you'll understand what I am talking about), such that there never were front vowels next to uvulars at the time of the GVC. Yet, the assumption of an earlier uvular stop stage is not really necessary for this theory; the PIE0 antecedent of *h2 and *h3 may just as well have been a uvular (or pharyngeal) fricative already.
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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by Tropylium »

WeepingElf wrote:A interesting idea, Tropylium, and IIRC also proposed by Kortlandt.
Sorry, I what now? This sounds like you missed a part of a phrase somewhere.

I don't recall having suggested *h₂ as /q/ in PIE (though I know some people think *h₂ comes from a Nostratic *q). My own reshuffle speculation along these lines was that *h₂ th₂ < pre-PIE *kʰ [qʰ] *tʰ, and then *tʰ is the only voiceless aspirate that survives into PIE proper. Khalkha Mongolian and Vietnamese are similar: *pʰ > /f ~ ∅/ quite early, *kʰ > x later, /tʰ/ still remains.

I have not given thought to how to bring *h₃ into this; both Nort's *ʁ < *ɢ and close-to-your-thinking **χʷ< *qʷʰ would be conceivable.
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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by KathTheDragon »

WeepingElf wrote:I still do not understand Kath's scepticism against *o having been rounded in PIE3
I've already conceded that *o (probably) was rounded by late PIE, just not early/pre-PIE.
it turned an adjacent open front vowel into an open back vowel.
IMO this is unwarranted - the frontness of *e is clearly secondary, so all we can say about *h₂ is that it inhibited fronting. Only *h₃ can properly be said to have backed anything.

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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by WeepingElf »

KathTheDragon wrote:
WeepingElf wrote:I still do not understand Kath's scepticism against *o having been rounded in PIE3
I've already conceded that *o (probably) was rounded by late PIE, just not early/pre-PIE.
Fine. So we agree that *o probably was rounded in post-Anatolian PIE (PIE3), though with pre-Anatolian PIE (PIE2) the matter is less certain. I feel, however, that when a language has three open vowels with different degrees of backness, the backmost is likely to acquire rounding soon, in order to make the space less crowded. In my opinion, PIE2 had something like *[æ a ɒ], which evolved into something like *[ɛ a ɔ] in PIE3. In PIE1 - before ablaut - all these, according to my model, still were just one vowel!

It is thus not certain that *h3 originally had a rounding effect, though the Greek triple reflex seems to indicate just that.
it turned an adjacent open front vowel into an open back vowel.
IMO this is unwarranted - the frontness of *e is clearly secondary, so all we can say about *h₂ is that it inhibited fronting. Only *h₃ can properly be said to have backed anything.
That's another way of putting it, fine. The pre-ablaut stage (PIE1) had just one open vowel, unmarked for fronting, and I see no reason to reconstruct it as *æ or even *e rather than *a.
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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by Nortaneous »

WeepingElf wrote:So, I consider it likely that *h3=*h2w, whatever *h2 may have been
I've seen it proposed somewhere that there was a PIE phoneme *h2w -- that would have to be rejected.
I have already laid out yesterday what may have been the reason that there was no palatalized uvular stop - uvular stops backed adjacent front vowels (try to say [qe] or [qi], and you'll understand what I am talking about), such that there never were front vowels next to uvulars at the time of the GVC.
Are there any languages where uvulars back vowels, rather than lowering them?
Tropylium wrote:I don't recall having suggested *h₂ as /q/ in PIE (though I know some people think *h₂ comes from a Nostratic *q). My own reshuffle speculation along these lines was that *h₂ th₂ < pre-PIE *kʰ [qʰ] *tʰ, and then *tʰ is the only voiceless aspirate that survives into PIE proper. Khalkha Mongolian and Vietnamese are similar: *pʰ > /f ~ ∅/ quite early, *kʰ > x later, /tʰ/ still remains.
This, of course, runs into the problem that it's unlikely for aspiration to condition *e > a... but plosive MOA-vowel quality interactions can do strange things -- see Adjarian's law for an example.
KathTheDragon wrote:IMO this is unwarranted - the frontness of *e is clearly secondary
I don't know about that. Ubykh /a/ sounds pretty fronted to me, at least when it's not around consonants that would back it. PIE may have come under NWC influence at some point, and phonetic details rub off easily upon contact.

Unfortunately, while the /a: a i u/ vowel system sometimes attributed to pre-PIE (with *a: *a > *o *e for PIE proper) looks a lot like a less vertical form of the NWC /a: a ə/, the NWC long vowel seems to be a recent development -- and it's from compensatory lengthening due to laryngeal loss, rather than the stress hijinks of the alleged PIE /a: a/. (And this NWC laryngeal loss doesn't even parallel the PIE long vowels -- in NWC, /a:/ is from *ha *ah or *ʕa *aʕ.
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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by KathTheDragon »

WeepingElf wrote:Fine. So we agree that *o probably was rounded in post-Anatolian PIE (PIE3), though with pre-Anatolian PIE (PIE2) the matter is less certain. I feel, however, that when a language has three open vowels with different degrees of backness, the backmost is likely to acquire rounding soon, in order to make the space less crowded. In my opinion, PIE2 had something like *[æ a ɒ], which evolved into something like *[ɛ a ɔ] in PIE3. In PIE1 - before ablaut - all these, according to my model, still were just one vowel!
We agree near-perfectly, then. The major difference between us is that I follow Kümmel in positing *ā as well for pre-PIE, which (after the rise of ablaut) backed to *ɑ̄, subsequently rounding to *ɔ̄ together with *ɑ > *ɔ to become "apophonic" *o. The other difference is that I use more descriptive terms for the various phases of PIE.
Nortaneous wrote:I've seen it proposed somewhere that there was a PIE phoneme *h2w -- that would have to be rejected.
I've seen it (tentatively) suggested as well and I think it's probably correct. But then I reject a rounded *h₃.
I don't know about that. Ubykh /a/ sounds pretty fronted to me, at least when it's not around consonants that would back it. PIE may have come under NWC influence at some point, and phonetic details rub off easily upon contact.
Funnily enough, that does sound exactly like my conception of how the PIE low vowels came about: original central vowel fronts except when adjacent to certain consonants. So I don't see any problem here.
Unfortunately, while the /a: a i u/ vowel system sometimes attributed to pre-PIE (with *a: *a > *o *e for PIE proper) looks a lot like a less vertical form of the NWC /a: a ə/, the NWC long vowel seems to be a recent development.
I've actually gone further and speculated about a possible full triangular system /a i u aː iː uː/ for pre-PIE (and this would be really old) which rather takes away from the comparison with Caucasian.

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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by Nortaneous »

KathTheDragon wrote:
Unfortunately, while the /a: a i u/ vowel system sometimes attributed to pre-PIE (with *a: *a > *o *e for PIE proper) looks a lot like a less vertical form of the NWC /a: a ə/, the NWC long vowel seems to be a recent development.
I've actually gone further and speculated about a possible full triangular system /a i u aː iː uː/ for pre-PIE (and this would be really old) which rather takes away from the comparison with Caucasian.
The non-ablauting *o in *potis argument? It seems bizarre that the only time /a:/ would show up is in the ablaut system. Does Brugmann's law (which is AFAIK the only evidence for positing a phonemic distinction between two o-vowels) apply to anything but an ablaut alternant of *e?
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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by KathTheDragon »

Nortaneous wrote:It seems bizarre that the only time /a:/ would show up is in the ablaut system.
Nah, not really, given that it's largely only detectable because of ablaut. It's like saying "it seems bizarre that we can only internally distinguish Germanic *e and *i in Gothic on the basis of their ablaut alternants".
Does Brugmann's law (which is AFAIK the only evidence for positing a phonemic distinction between two o-vowels) apply to anything but an ablaut alternant of *e?
I think most people believe that no, it doesn't, which makes it a good test for o-grades.

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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by Šọ̈́gala »

Regarding rounding of *o, I've often wondered about the nom. o-stem ending in Sanskrit. Utterance-finally, it is -aḥ, but before a voiced sound it has the allophone -o (< earlier /aw/). I have imagined a development from rounding assimilation: -os > -osʷ > -asʷ > -ahʷ > -ah but, when voiced, -oz > -ozʷ > -azʷ > -aɦʷ > -aw, with the decisive split resulting from different simplifications of hʷ vs. ɦʷ. I don't recall hearing anther explanation of the -o allomorph.

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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by KathTheDragon »

This paper deals with the reflexes of PIIr. *az (and *až), and explicitly denies mediation through a diphthong, since we never find e.g. ai < *āz, but rather ā with simple loss of the fricative, which indicates compensatory lengthening as the source of the long vowels instead. While the paper is agnostic on why *az > o in external sandhi, against the internal development to e, we can definitely rule out your hypothetical scenario.

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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

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KathTheDragon wrote:
Nortaneous wrote:It seems bizarre that the only time /a:/ would show up is in the ablaut system.
Nah, not really, given that it's largely only detectable because of ablaut. It's like saying "it seems bizarre that we can only internally distinguish Germanic *e and *i in Gothic on the basis of their ablaut alternants".
In the six-vowel theory, pre-PIE had /a i u a: i: u/, which became PIE /e₁ e₂ o₂ o₁ i u/. The distinction between the two variants of the mid vowels is lost everywhere except Indo-Iranian, where *o₁ -- but not *o₂ -- becomes PII *ā in open syllables.

The problem is, we don't see the correspondences indicative of *o₁ -- Skt. ā ~ Gk. o, etc. -- anywhere except in the ablaut system. And the main appeal of the six-vowel theory is that it provides a more parsimonious explanation for Brugmann's law, so if you still have to appeal to morphological shenanigans, what's the point?
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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by KathTheDragon »

I'm not sure I understand. The whole point is that ablaut only acted on the original low vowels. In principle, every instance of /aː/ is susceptible to being shortened to /a/ because ablaut was just that widespread.

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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by dhok »

Nortaneous wrote:
KathTheDragon wrote:
Nortaneous wrote:It seems bizarre that the only time /a:/ would show up is in the ablaut system.
Nah, not really, given that it's largely only detectable because of ablaut. It's like saying "it seems bizarre that we can only internally distinguish Germanic *e and *i in Gothic on the basis of their ablaut alternants".
In the six-vowel theory, pre-PIE had /a i u a: i: u/, which became PIE /e₁ e₂ o₂ o₁ i u/. The distinction between the two variants of the mid vowels is lost everywhere except Indo-Iranian, where *o₁ -- but not *o₂ -- becomes PII *ā in open syllables.

The problem is, we don't see the correspondences indicative of *o₁ -- Skt. ā ~ Gk. o, etc. -- anywhere except in the ablaut system. And the main appeal of the six-vowel theory is that it provides a more parsimonious explanation for Brugmann's law, so if you still have to appeal to morphological shenanigans, what's the point?
Moreover, a six-vowel theory like that makes an absolute hash of ablaut, particularly in the zero-grade. For one thing, why do syllabified sonorants yield long vowels, not short vowels?

What are some instances of *o not from ablaut that are said to not operate under Brugmann's Law? Just *pótis? The best other example that comes to mind is--I assume, I don't actually know--'sheep', where *h₂ówis is reconstructed to give Latin ovis, Lithuanian avìs*, Greek ὄϊς, and Sanskrit avís (not **āvis). However, we have āw in Tocharian B, and that must be from an e-grade *h₂éwis. So we then reconstruct an *o~*e ablaut pattern in the paradigm of "sheep", and the Indo-Iranian reflex can then come straightforwardly from the e-grade, like the Tocharian. (We've also got Lycian χawa-; the o-grade would have yielded **χewa-).

When I was at Leiden in the summer of 2016, the prevailing theory was that "sheep" actually goes back to *h₃éwis; *h₃-colored *e is then supposed to have a different quality from original *o, so that original *o is subject to Brugmann's but *h₃-colored *e isn't. But I don't see how you're going to explain the Tocharian reflex this way; you've got to have *h₂éwis.

*incidentally, why do we have word-final accentuation in Lithuanian in this word and initial accentuation everywhere else?

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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by Nortaneous »

KathTheDragon wrote:I'm not sure I understand. The whole point is that ablaut only acted on the original low vowels. In principle, every instance of /aː/ is susceptible to being shortened to /a/ because ablaut was just that widespread.
What?

The six-vowel explanation for Brugmann's Law is that ablaut-alternant *o was phonemically distinct from the *o in *potis, right? So we'll call the ablaut alternant, to which Brugmann's Law applies, *ɔ, and the other one that appears in *potis *ȯ.

(I used *o1 and *o2 earlier, but this makes it clearer that these are two phonemically distinct vowels.)

In the conventional reconstruction of PIE, Brugmann's Law is morphologically sensitive -- there was no distinction between *ɔ and *ȯ. There was only *o, which was subject to open-syllable lengthening only when it was an ablaut alternant of *e. There's AFAIK no good way to explain this from analogy, but positing a morphologically sensitive sound change is pretty weird and is best avoided.

(Of course, if there's even one common word in which this lengthening would for whatever reason obtain, Brugmann's Law could simply be analogy -- Legion had some examples in Romance of analogy applying from only one common word, IIRC.)

In the six-vowel reconstruction, it's easy to explain Brugmann's Law. *ɔ lengthened in open syllables, and *ȯ didn't. (What's actually going on, of course, is that Brugmann's Law is the only existing preservation of the original length of *ɔ, which is of course from earlier *a:. The lengthening doesn't apply to *ȯ because there was no length to retain.)

But *ɔ seems to appear only as an ablaut alternant of *e. (And apparently there are some ablaut-alternant *o to which Brugmann's Law doesn't apply, especially in adpositions. )

If there was a distinct *ɔ and Brugmann's Law is a true sound law, shouldn't we expect it to show up anywhere at all besides in the ablaut system? All the other vowels show up somewhere:

- *e (< *a) in the ablaut system
- *ė (< *i) in *-es
- *ȯ (< *u) in *pȯtis
- *i (< *i:) in *-is and *pȯtis
- *u (< *u:) in *-su and *bhuH

Then again, given the low attestation of most of these vowels, it's entirely possible that *ɔ simply never appeared in an open syllable that was preserved into Indo-Iranian outside the ablaut system...
dhok wrote:Moreover, a six-vowel theory like that makes an absolute hash of ablaut, particularly in the zero-grade. For one thing, why do syllabified sonorants yield long vowels, not short vowels?
*əy *əw > *i: *u: followed by reanalysis of schwa as epenthetic is at least possible.
What are some instances of *o not from ablaut that are said to not operate under Brugmann's Law? Just *pótis? The best other example that comes to mind is--I assume, I don't actually know--'sheep', where *h₂ówis is reconstructed to give Latin ovis, Lithuanian avìs*, Greek ὄϊς, and Sanskrit avís (not **āvis). However, we have āw in Tocharian B, and that must be from an e-grade *h₂éwis. So we then reconstruct an *o~*e ablaut pattern in the paradigm of "sheep", and the Indo-Iranian reflex can then come straightforwardly from the e-grade, like the Tocharian. (We've also got Lycian χawa-; the o-grade would have yielded **χewa-).

When I was at Leiden in the summer of 2016, the prevailing theory was that "sheep" actually goes back to *h₃éwis; *h₃-colored *e is then supposed to have a different quality from original *o, so that original *o is subject to Brugmann's but *h₃-colored *e isn't. But I don't see how you're going to explain the Tocharian reflex this way; you've got to have *h₂éwis.
Hyllested and Cohen propose a sound law of *h3w > *h2w and say it's somehow relevant, but naturally the page where they explain the derivation of the various forms for 'sheep' isn't in the Google Books preview.

If this law holds up, the obvious thing to do is compare it to other IE delabialization rules -- maybe *h3 was /x_w/ after all... (or /G_w/, but pibati is pretty weak evidence, especially for something so bizarre as /G_w/ contrastive with /w/ as the only voiced fricative.)
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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by WeepingElf »

Nortaneous wrote:Hyllested and Cohen propose a sound law of *h3w > *h2w and say it's somehow relevant, but naturally the page where they explain the derivation of the various forms for 'sheep' isn't in the Google Books preview.

If this law holds up, the obvious thing to do is compare it to other IE delabialization rules -- maybe *h3 was /x_w/ after all... (or /G_w/, but pibati is pretty weak evidence, especially for something so bizarre as /G_w/ contrastive with /w/ as the only voiced fricative.)
This development makes perfect sense if *h3 was labialized *h2.

And here's another thought about the idea that *h2 and *h3 started as uvular stops: the 3-way split of the velars at the GVC would have led to an overcrowding of stops in the velar-to-uvular range: *ḱ k q (plus the labialized versions of the latter two), which may have triggered the fricativization of the uvulars.
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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

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dhok wrote:For one thing, why do syllabified sonorants yield long vowels, not short vowels?
Where do they yield long vowels?
What are some instances of *o not from ablaut that are said to not operate under Brugmann's Law? Just *pótis?
This is an excellent question, and I wish I had an answer for you. Unfortunately, *potis is the only word that recurringly comes up, so that's the only one I know of. I do plan to make a very thorough study at some point in the future, specifically to comb through the entire lexicon looking for any possible examples of non-apophonic and non-coloured *o. The fact that I only have this one example is why I'm refraining from trying to use this theory more generally - I need more evidence for it to be convincing.
The best other example that comes to mind is--I assume, I don't actually know--'sheep', where *h₂ówis is reconstructed to give Latin ovis, Lithuanian avìs*, Greek ὄϊς, and Sanskrit avís (not **āvis). However, we have āw in Tocharian B, and that must be from an e-grade *h₂éwis. So we then reconstruct an *o~*e ablaut pattern in the paradigm of "sheep", and the Indo-Iranian reflex can then come straightforwardly from the e-grade, like the Tocharian. (We've also got Lycian χawa-; the o-grade would have yielded **χewa-).

When I was at Leiden in the summer of 2016, the prevailing theory was that "sheep" actually goes back to *h₃éwis; *h₃-colored *e is then supposed to have a different quality from original *o, so that original *o is subject to Brugmann's but *h₃-colored *e isn't. But I don't see how you're going to explain the Tocharian reflex this way; you've got to have *h₂éwis.
Well, it's a good thing I reconstruct *h₂owis ~ *h₂ewis.
Nortaneous wrote:snip
Oh, I get you now. Well, the o-grade thematic vowel probably counts, as does the *o of o-stem pronouns. I know the former does lengthen in Indo-Iranian, but not if the latter does - yet, theoretic considerations say that it should derive from former *aː.

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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by dhok »

KathTheDragon wrote:
dhok wrote:For one thing, why do syllabified sonorants yield long vowels, not short vowels?
Where do they yield long vowels?
If *e₁ *e₂ *o₂ *o₁ *i *u = *a *i *ā *u *ī *ū, as the six-vowel theory proposes, then we've got syllabified *w *y giving long *ī *ū in pre-IE. Nort proposes there may have been schwa-epenthesis followed by monophthongization, i.e. *CwC > *CəwC > *CūC > *CuC, but this is yet another additional assumption the theory must adhere to simply to explain the data.

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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

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Ah, I see. In my framework, those schwas are from the original underlying vowels, so *CawC > *CəwC > *CuːC > *CuC

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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by dhok »

So...wait, zero-grades derive from e-grades? (Or are they 'a-grades'?)

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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by KathTheDragon »

More or less, yes, though I thought this was generally understood, since verbs preserve the distribution between accented e-grade and unaccented zero-grade particularly well, e.g. *h₁ésti < *h₁ásti vs. *h₁sénti < *h₁asánti

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Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Post by WeepingElf »

Alwin Kloekhorst seems to think that *h2 and *h3 were uvular stops in PIE; his web site teases us of a manuscript in which he says that there is evidence of this in Anatolian; alas, the manuscript is not available, so nobody knows what his argumentation is.
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