Indo-European Historical Linguistics

Fortson: a few remarks about some Chapter 4 exercises

• First, some clean-up from last class.
• The nasals and other sonorants, when they are syllabic (i.e. work like vowels and so add to the syllable count of a word), have a little circle under them:
• *r̥, *l̥,*m̥, *n̥, *i, *u
• When they are consonants, they look like *r, *l, *m, *n, *y (or *i̯), *w (or *u̯)
• Note that Fortson uses just u and i at times for the glides when they are consonants.
  
• Surely there are slight differences between conventions about this, so pay attention to what Fortson does and when you look at what somebody else does, be sure to think about it and make sure it makes sense to you.
• Ablaut: it seems that sometimes the name "full grade" is used of just the short e, but I've found several Indo-Europeanists out there using "full grade" of both short e and short o, and that's how I learned it. The distinction makes no real difference as long as you know that in ablaut, there are basically 5 ways a vowel can ablaut. Namely, it can be long e, short e, zero-grade (no e or o), short o, and long o.
  
• 4.8:
• First, look at 4.6, top of P. 78, which contains the following
  

• Sanskrit word	सूनर (well-manned) sūnara
  which is a compound of	सु + नरः (well/good + man) sŭ + nara note the short vowel sŭ (the micron over a vowel indicates that it is short)
  note the long ū: there is no discernible reason for it to be long!
  Greek word	ἀνήρ anēr "man"
  note that anēr does not fit the PIE root structure CeC,CReC, CeRC, etc.
  Sanskrit and Greek suggest	something is happening at the start of *_nVr
  reconstructed PIE	*h₂ner (see P. 77 bottom)
  Which makes this a normal PIE root	HReC
  The long ū in Sanskrit and the start of Greek ἀνήρ anēr "man" make sense as evidence of a laryngeal that dropped out and left a trace.	A laryngeal explains it.

  
  
• 4.8 is a case that is parallel to the case of सूनर sūnara (well-manned)
  
• *h₁es

• Sanskrit	अ- + सत् a- + sat ("not" + "being")  >> अासत् ās ăt
  PIE ancestors (given that Sanskrit a comes from n̥)	*n̥ + *sn̥t (zero-grade)
  BUT	*n̥ is zero-grade: where did the Sanskrit ā come from?
  a laryngeal that dropped out and caused compensatory lengthening	*n̥+*h₁sn̥t changed into Sanskrit āsăt It helps to know that most PIE vowels changed to short a in Sanskrit

   
• Another word about 4.9
• This exercise is asking us to analyze these words in English.
• So "disproportionate" breaks down into:
• dis- ( "undo," "not" "opposite," as in dis-guise, dis-approve, etc.)
• changes the meaning/function: creates a new dictionary entry: so it's derivational
  
• pro- ("according," "forward," as in profess, protect, etc.)
• changes the meaning/function: creates a new dictionary entry: so it's derivational
• portion 
• -ate (creates adjectives)
• changes the meaning/function: creates a new dictionary entry: so it's derivational
• BUT, we can look behind those elements into their histories and find:
• 'portion' is from Latin and is cognate with pars, partis "part" and just might be from pro ratione, which means it has possibly two morphemes.
  
• so once we leave English and delve into the history of a word, we might find even more morphemes, which somewhat blurs the border of what is a morpheme.
• But it's usually pretty clear that a morpheme is the most basic unit in the target language that has meaning: further parts of the word that had meaning at some historical point in the word's history but no longer bear that meaning for any target language speakers are only morphemes etymologically, not in the language the word actually occurs in and is being analyzed in.
• Exercises 10 and 11 are not hard, once you figure out what they want.
• 10 wants you to look for CeC, CReC, CerRC, CReRC, sCeC, etc. that mark a root as opposed to suffixes and prefixes and endings and thematic vowels, which do not have that structure. The exercise is purely designed to get us used to reading these things and understanding their parts.
  
• 11 wants you to learn that a "thematic" vowel is or -o- or -e- and anything else is a root, an ending, a suffix, an infix, or a prefix.