Reconstruction talk:Proto-Indo-European/dʰugh₂tḗr

Whose reconstruction is this? --Blog321 16:14, 1 May 2008 (UTC)


 * This is the reconstruction in basically all non-obsolete etymological IE dictionaries, and probably the only one that could possibly made, based on the attested evidence. Nobody "owns" reconstructions, at least not inasmuch as nobody owns mathematical theorems. If you have specific questions/comments, feel free to state them, otherwise this talk page will be deleted. --Ivan Štambuk 16:25, 1 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Except for the accentuation over the e, both Beekes and Pokorny make identical reconstructions. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 16:30, 1 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Stress is usually reconstructed on the basis of Vedic (cf. Sanskrit - this is prātipadika or stem form used for lemmatization; the real nominative singular is ) where the PIE mobile stress (i.e. it wasn't predictable by phonological rules) was preserved basically intact, in Ancient Greek with some limitations, and indirectly in Germanic (via Verner's law) and Balto-Slavic (with significant innovations). */e/ is long because of a peculiar rule discovered by Oswald Szemerényi where word-final forms **-VRs and **-VRh₂ (/h₂/ was probably velar fricative, so you can see the connection with */s/) turn to *-V:R, where V is a vowel, : vowel length and R a resonant (syllabicity of which can be determined by a rule). This is just the case with nominative singular suffix -s and the stem form of this noun: *dʰugh₂tér + -s > *dʰugh₂tḗr. You can see it generally well preserved in nominative singulars of r-stems in Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Old Persian, Avestan..  HTH ^_^


 * Interesting, that's exactly what happens in Greek. The final sigma of the nominative stem disappears, but lengthens the final syllable from (in this case) ε to η (which is why it's ε in all other forms).  I was not aware that went back to PIE.  Thanks.  -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 17:30, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
 * > Szemerényi's law on Wikipedia. --Ivan Štambuk 21:31, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

OK. So this is basically Beekes's reconstruction, as far as I understand. Now are there any linguists nowadays that would disagree with this reconstruction? Or, let's say, when there is disagreement among modern linguists, how can you predict whether there is disagreement based on sound laws? In other words, there are some reconstructions that are more accepted than others, but how do you know or predict which ones are less accepted? I bet it has to do with disagreements on what the specific sound laws are. Isn't that the case?

And another thing: This particular reconstruction here, on which Indo-European languages is it based? From which languages did they depart in order to arrive at the reconstruction? Did they take all possible languages into account, or just some of them?

And which specific dictionaries besides Beekes do also return this form besides Beekes? Can you give some examples? --Blog321 21:33, 1 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, Beekes is definitely an Ancient Greek guy, but certainly takes a lot of other languages into consideration. However, I think you misunderstood the comments.  This is not Beekes' reconstruction.  What I said was that Beekes agrees with this reconstruction, as does Pokorny.  The point that Ivan was trying to make was that, at this point in the game, it's not a matter of personal ownership.  These reconstructions are accepted by most linguists, with only minor variations; and when there are variations, they are noted.  The important point is that this is not a work of a single individual.  If asked whose reconstruction Chordata is, the answer, I suppose, would be Bateson, but it's not really his at this point.  It's a scientific theory used and contributed to by many scientists.  PIE reconstructions are a similar case.  -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 21:43, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

So let's say I take this *dʰugh₂tḗr form for granted. Now what should I do to derive the Ancient Greek derivate? Do some of the sound laws between Proto-Indo-European and Ancient Greek have names? For example, is there such a thing as a "Beekes's law"? And if the sound changes don't have names, then how can I identify them or look them up somewhere? Because I guess that if the reconstructed form is common knowledge, then the sound laws are probably also common knowledge. Is this right? --Blog321 22:20, 1 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Take a look at Ancient_Greek for some examples. Truth be told, I don't know that many of them myself.  -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 22:24, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

So let's say I use the sound laws mentioned on Wikipedia, and apply them to this particular example. Ideally, if all the main sound laws are mentioned, then I should arrive safely at the derivate form when I depart from the base form. I just found out that there is a Proto-Greek between Proto-Indo-European and Ancient Greek. So I guess I'd start like this:

Now I'm stuck there. To begin with, I'm not sure what "aspirate" means here. Does it mean any aspirated consonant, as I would assume, or does it have some special meaning in the study of PIE and/or Ancient Greek? And what exactly does "de-voicing" mean here? Does it mean I just convert /dʰ/ to /tʰ/ and leave the secondary articulation (in this case, aspiration ʰ) alone, or does it also get deaspirated at the same time? --Blog321 22:58, 1 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Bear in mind for the following that I am not a trained linguist, so take what I say with a grain of salt. However, I do believe the aspiration remains.  Most PIE words starting with bʰ become pʰ (φ).  And yes, I imagine it would apply to aspirated voiced consonants in general (as Ancient Greek had none).  -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 23:04, 1 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, dʰ is a "voiced aspirate". Aspirates are traditionally reconstructed as voiced (all the branches except for Greek and Italic somehow say that were voiced), but at least in theory, they were somehow "neutral to the feature of voicing", with aspiration as the only contrastive element.
 * So PIE */bʰ/ > AGr. [pʰ], */dʰ/ > AGr. [tʰ], */gʰ/ > AGr. [kʰ].
 * Now you're left with laryngeal h₂, which in CVC clusters (C=consonant, V=vowel), like here in -gh₂t- in most IE daughers gives /a/, or disappears, depending on the syllable (in non-initial syllable it usually disappears in Germanic and Balto-Slavic). In Indo-Iranian, for example, it regularly gives /i/ (or is sometimes dropped) - compare Sanskrit duhita < *dʰugh₂tḗr, but in Ancient Greek regular is the reflection: */h₁/ > ε, */h₂/ > α and */h₃/ > ο. Often it's said that laryngeals were "syllabic" in that position.
 * So you finally end up with the sequence *dʰugh₂tēr > *tʰugh₂tēr > tʰugatēr = attested version ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 23:58, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
 * When I go through the lists of sound changes on both Wikipedia pages (Proto-Greek + Ancient Greek), I don't find this particular law that you mention (/Ch₂C/ > /CaC/). There are only these two, as far as I can tell:

The sequence CRHC (C = consonant, R = resonant, H = laryngeal) becomes CRēC, CRāC, CRōC from H = h₁, h₂, h₃ respectively. The sequence CRHV (C = consonant, R = resonant, H = laryngeal, V = vowel) becomes CaRV.

But in this case () there is no /CRH/. Does this mean that something has been omitted from the Wikipedia pages, or is there something I don't notice? --Blog321 01:33, 2 May 2008 (UTC)


 * No, that's another thing, Ch₂C > CαC was regular in Ancient Greek. Try the real books, 'pedia is barely adequate. --Ivan Štambuk 01:46, 2 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually it does list it: Indo-European sound laws. --Ivan Štambuk 01:54, 2 May 2008 (UTC)