Reconstruction talk:Proto-Indo-European/wédōr

Germanic and Balto-Slavic point to an o-grade root *wod- not e-grade *wed- as has been here uniformly presented. This nouns also has different reconstructed paradigms according to different authors (acrostatic or proterokinetic), as it was mentioned in the original article at Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/wódr̥ before it was butchered. We must not give preference to either opinion due to NPOV policy, but must mention all. Also, both the collective and the original singular form should be kept on the same page for the easiness of browsing - they're very closely related and their reflexes have been mixed in the daughters. They're inseparable from the perspective of an etymological dictionary. --Ivan Štambuk 21:02, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm fine with merging them back again, but technically the collective suffix is a derivation, producing a new noun with a distinct inflectional paradigm (amphikinetic rather than the pattern of the original noun), and it inflects according to the singular, not the plural. The grade of the vowel was probably taken from the original noun when the two were integrated into one paradigm, but collectives were amphikinetic and therefore must have inflected in this manner at one point. —CodeCat 22:27, 24 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm against excessive splittism in etymological appendices for exactly such scenarious - it's oftentimes impossible to treat various derivations as "different words" due to various mergers and levelings that occurred in the daughters, and strict adherence to the mainspace policy of 1 different entry per 1 different word could possibly yield a reconstruction (or the whole paradigm in this case) that is nowhere directly attested, or several questionable reconstructions when there is a dispute among sources. Whenever there is a "clean" reconstruction of a noun or adjective within several branches, with minimal or no anomalies, it should merit a separate entry of its own, and in all the other cases we should IMHO simply lump them all together in a single entry, treating the appendix page not as representing a particular reconstruction, but the whole word family (choosing whatever as the basic form). But there is no hurry, let this page be for now. When we have enough similar cases we can treat this whole issue separately with multiple involved editors. The most important thing is that the content is being added. --Ivan Štambuk 22:45, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The paradigms didn't always merge though, sometimes the collective was used as a noun in its own right, just as in PIE. Many languages have words that descend from one or the other. In some cases, Germanic feminine nouns even derive from the collectives, because they had the same suffix.
 * There is a similar issue with verbs. I was thinking of splitting the different derivational stems of each verb into different articles whenever possible, so that we would have one article for the perfect, one for the present and one for the aorist. What do you think of this? —CodeCat 23:33, 24 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I'd personally prefer them all be listed on the same page, one after the another. Descendants could however be grouped according to types of stems they reflect (present, aorist, perfect, causative..), like in LIV, and within those groups again into families. There just doesn't seem to be enough material to warrant 3+ appendices for every root. I don't know much details of PIE verbal categories though - seems too complicated without the vast amount of knowledge of conjugational classes of Sanskrit, Latin, Greek and other ancients, and every author seems to pursue his own different set of conventions for reconstructions, inventing ad-hoc rules or entire verbal categories as they see fit. --Ivan Štambuk 00:34, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
 * As far as I know, every verb has one 'inherent' aspect, which can be either present, aorist or perfect. The other two aspects were created by adding a suffix or by reduplication. This process isn't predictable though, each verb had its own way of forming the other two aspects, and many verbs didn't even form all three. Some verbs even had two different ways of forming the same aspect. Verbs derived from other verbs (causatives, iteratives) and verbs derived from nominals always had only a present stem. These facts together strongly suggest (according to Ringe) that the aspect system was originally derivational, creating separate verbs in their own right rather than extending the existing paradigm of a verb. These aspect stems were later integrated into a single paradigm, but this was not yet complete even in Greek, which still shows much of the original 'deficiencies'. —CodeCat 09:50, 25 April 2011 (UTC)