NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/sci/lang/8945

Text File | 1993-01-23 | 6.2 KB | 123 lines

Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!nntp.Stanford.EDU!alderson
From: [e-mail] (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: Tones in PIE?
In-Reply-To: [e-mail]
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Originator: [e-mail]
Sender: [e-mail] (Mr News)
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Cisco Systems (MIS)
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 19:19:06 GMT
Lines: 108

In article <[e-mail]>, connolly@memstvx1 writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Rich Alderson) writes:

>>I think that the evidence of Greek and Sanskrit--both pitch--along with the
>>non-reduction of vowels in the earliest-attested languages is fairly good
>>evidence for the nature of the (primary) Indo-European accent.
>
>Two points:
>
>1. If the accent in the common ancestor of Greek and Sanskrit was (at least
>primarily) one of pitch, it remains to be shown that there were two
>*contrasting* pitch contours on stressed syllables.  Your post rightly rejects
>the claim that the Sanskrit "circumflex" on forms such as _svam_ indicates
>circumlex intonation in Indo-European.  There remains, I think the Greek
>genitive plural.  *Any* dissyllabic form we like could be posited to produce
>this.  Perhaps we should consider *-oHn (with syllabic n, since the laryngeal
>was a consonant)?  Here too the circumflex would be a peculiarly Greek
>development.

But you don't address either the disyllabic reading of the Sanskrit genitive
plural, or the Germanic data, skimpy as it is.

>2. Quite certainly the primary PIE stress was not *always* one of pitch.  You
>mention "non-reduction of vowels in the earliest-attested languages" to
>demonstrate the lack of a strong "dynamic" accent.  This argument carries
>considerable weight.  But equally certainly, the quantitative ablaut
>alternations (e:0, ei:i, eu:u, eH:H, eHi:Hi, en:n, etc.) argue *for* a strong
>dynamic accent at a still earlier period, since these alternations are well
>reflected in Greek and Sanskrit.

The "proto-language uniformity" issue raises its ugly head.

Hmm.  Sanskrit and Greek are part of a well-known Central group sharing a large
number of morphological innovations and several phonological ones as well--in
fact, Greek is the most "satem" of the "centum" languages at its earliest
attestation, with all those secondary assibilations.

Maybe the pitch accent both show was a Central innovation, and ought not to be reconstructed for the whole family?

In any case, whether pitch is a Centralism or not, it's clear that the stage at
which quantitative ablaut arose is (probably much) earlier, since there are
reflexes of it in every IE language, and it is only productive morphologically
--that is, it defines morphological distinctions, but is not predictable phono-
logically.

So we're left with the possibility of a pitch or a *weak* stress (like modern
French) at the time of dialectical breakup, given that phenomena consonant with
a *strong* stress do not occur.

[discussion of Germanic data omitted]

>>The accent placement in Greek is best described by restricting the count to
>>*vocalic* morae, and considering the 1st and 2nd declension nominative
>>plurals and the middle presents to end in -oy or -ay, while the (rare)
>>locative and the thematic optative end in -oi.  In the locative this allows a
>>disambiguation from the nominative plural; in the optative, I would claim
>>that it is a reflex of a fairly late retention of the original laryngeal
>>(compare the athematic alternation -ye:/-i:).
>
>I meant, of course, only vocalic morae; so do all other descriptions I know.
>I also happily concur with the late laryngeal retention.  It should be obvious
>that many laryngeals were *not* lost in PIE times, much less during the
>transition from "Indo-Hittite" to PIE, as Sturtevant and others have claimed.
>Unfortunately, most Indo-Europeanists still try to sweep laryngeals under the
>rug, either denying them or pretending they don't matter.  They do.  (P.S. if
>anyone cares, I'll email a list of my pubs arguing for laryngeals in early
>Proto-Germanic, including how they affected the operation of Verner's Law.)

Sorry.  I'm still sensitive to the reaction this suggestion got when I made it
as a student.  I'm not used to people agreeing with me.  :-)

>>(For the non-Indo-Europeanists out there:  The preceding is not the usual
>>formulation, but my own, so expect to be challenged if you mention it in
>>polite company.)
>
>Let's be rude.  It's more conducive to discovering the truth.

But disconcerting if you don't know that it's going to get a rude reception, as
I can personally attest.

>[Stuff omitted]

>>However, modulo the restricted placement of the accent within Greek, the
>>placement within disyllables (for example) accords very well with that in
>>Sanskrit.  There is good reason for accepting that the Inod-European accent
>>was a pitch rise.
>
>Again, this shows only the *location* of the pitch, if such it was.

Point well taken.

I don't have a firm enough grasp on the current literature on tonogenesis to
say for certain but isn't it (at least usually) the case that when a pitch
accent arises from a stress accent, this is in company with loss of syllables
usw.?  (I mind the Norwegian and Swedish contours, for example.)  The
particular phenomena I have in mind don't appear to have occurred in Greek or
Sanskrit, and so I would postulate that the pitch system which shows up in both
is reconstructible for the time of dialectal breakup, and was stable in the
proto-language at the time.

NOTE:  I wrote the preceding paragraph before the discussion above of the
possibility of a Central innovation in the nature of the accent.  A weak stress
rather than pitch is also conformable to the data at hand.
--
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
[e-mail]                              _The Lost Road_