Re: Evidence for Nostratic? (was Re: Proto-Uralic?)

On Sat, 5 Jul 2003 19:04:52 -0600, Muke Tever <muke@...> wrote:

>[Hopefully this hasnt been answered yet...*grumbles about sporadic internet
>hours*]
No, indeed it wasn't until you answered it. :D

>Mainly because regular Latin sound changes in medial syllables reduce short
>vowels before /r/ to /e/.  Secondarily because the stem should be in
*corpes-,
>not _corpos-_ to begin with--_corporis_ is the anomaly, not _generis_.
Excellent!  So my earlier hypothesis was correct!  Thanks for the
explanation!

>Apparently what it was is all short vowels in medial syllables reduce to a
weak
>vowel that became /e/ before double consonants and /r/, /o/ then /u/
before /w/
>or dark /l/, and /i/ before single consonants and /N/.
Very interesting.  It appears that Proto-Latin or Proto-Italic had a
complicated vowel-change scheme which depended heavily on the following
consonant.  All the above changes could be explained by having all short
vowels in medial (unstressed, since Proto-Italic apparently had a regular
word-intial accent) syllables reduce to schwa /&/.  However, what
is 'dark /l/'?

Later on in Latin, unstressed /e/ very often (if not always) became /i/.

>The exceptions to this being that original /i/ remained /i/ before double
>consonants, and, more relevantly, that /o/ > /i/ is nearly always restored
to
>/o/ when analogy permits it.  The Latin -oris-type stem are an anomaly
caused by
>this, as the normal stem is -es- (seen in Greek, Sanskrit, Slavic,
Hittite, and
>Germanic):
>
>    << Neut s-stems in -er-, like _genus, generis_, reflect *-es-;
>       s-stems in -or- like _temporis_ to _tempus_  are secondary
>       hypercorrect forms, and provide clear (if indirect) evidence
>       of a period when /e/ and /o/ were in alternation in accord with
>       [the rules above].  That is, a creation like _tempora_ is only
>       possible if Romans could think that the stem-vowel -e- of
>       intermediate *tempera was a weakened form of the vowel seen in
>       the nom. *tempos. >>
>           --New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, §67.
I have that book too, but I never noticed that passage!  But then again,
I've never read it from front to back, LOL.  What that seems to suggest is
that Proto-Italic separated from PIE at a time when the Ablaut was not yet
formalized, or else Ablaut was still functioning.

So basically, I think that earlier *genes, *corpes became *genos, *corpos
on basis of analogy with masculine o-stems.  Genitive singular *geneses >
generis, but *corpeses > *corperis > corporis.  The question is, why was
generis kept that way, but *corperis became corporis analogically?  Perhaps
the former was more common than the latter?

- Rob

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