Yet again on intervocalic -dh- in Armenian

Yet again on intervocalic -dh- in Armenian. Miguel Carrasquer Vidal, October 2013 A few months ago, I published a paper here on Academia.edu on the fate of PIE intervocalic *-dh- in Armenian. As I said in that paper, the idea that it developed into -r- had occurred to me already some fifteen years ago, but I thought that my recollection of the details was good enough, and that I had not forgotten anything important when I put everything into writing last July. What I did not know at the time, and I updated the article when I found out, was that Jay Jasanoff had already published the same idea in 1979. But, as it turns out, I had indeed forgotten about something important. As I mentioned in my July 2013 article, I had corresponded with Alexis Manaster Ramer on the subject, and he was the one that suggested the etymology *medhu > ełr ho e to me. What I did no longer recall, was that Manaster Ramer had written an article about the matter, a draft of which I found a couple of days ago among my papers. I a t fi d any e ide e o li e that the a ti le as e e pu lished, a d I o fide t Ale is o t mind if I publish it here, if I state clearly that what follows was only a draft, not a finished paper. I still think it is interesting enough to make it available, if only because another example of the development *-dh- > -r- is given (*h1reudh- ed -> oppe o e > aroyr ass ), which, if I read the text of the paper correctly, is due to me, but that I had completely forgotten about. The full text of the draft is given below. I have corrected some obvious errors, and have tried to supply the missing or incomplete references. My own (2013) comments can be found as endnotes. Since all I have is a paper copy, I may of course have introduced some new typos along the way. A glass half-full: On the reflexes of PIE intervocalic *-dh- in Armenian Alexis Manaster Ramer, Wayne State University (ca. 2000) The long-standing question of how PIE intervocalic *-dh- is realized in Armenian seemed until recently to have been conclusively settled by Olsen (1989:9-10, n. 12). The reflex in question, apparently first proposed by Bugge, would be simply -z- (which, if we wanted to be completely precise, we could write as -z(-), since the following vowel is lost in Armenian in word-final position, or even as (-)z(-), because there could in theory be examples where the preceding vowel is likewise lost, although no such examples seem to be attested). To be sure, the issue had long been unnecessarily clouded by many doubtful etymologies propounded by some of the earlier authors (the debunking of which has tended to dominate the subsequent scholarly discussion), leading to the widespread feeling that the problem was a particularly difficult one (e.g., Jasanoff 1979: 138ff, Greppin 1980: 135-136). Given this, Olsen was surely right to make her case on the basis of just three carefully chosen examples. Two had long been known but had been controversial because of what many perceive as too great a difference in the semantics in each case, namely, suz(an)em i e se f. Greek o e , hide a d eluzanem let o e up, e t a t f. G eek e t . He thi d example involves a new etymology, namely fissu e, ut f. “a sk it vídhyati hu ts, pie es , but this, too, involves a fair degree of semantic divergence. Although we still argue for a significant e isio of Olse s theo , first let us consider the following arguments in support of the -z- reflex, which may not be entirely superfluous given the situation as just described. First, we should be careful to reject any lingering skepticism arising from the fact. alluded to above, that most of the examples cited in support of this sound law in the literature prior to Olsen have been found wanting (especially by Grippin). As a matter of pure logic (Manaster Ramer 1993, 1996b, Michalove et al. 1998, etc.), incorrect arguments for a given hypothesis, once refuted, should have no relevance at all in deciding if the hypothesis itself is correct. Second, as a general methodological rule, it is not reasonable to judge each example of a proposed sound law (or any scientific hypothesis) in isolatio . A o e, o e e a t o, of Olse s th ee examples might be insufficient to make us accept the sound law taking intervocalic *-dh- to -z-, but the three TOGETHER see uite ade uate. The p o le , of ou se, is that o e of Olse s e a ples involves the kind of immediately tangible semantic congruence that obtains between, say, Armenian kʿsa a d G eek ϝ , fo s hi h e e od has al a s see as elated e e i the absence of a satisfactory explanation of some of the sound correspondences, especially, the Armenian /kʿ/ vis-à-vis the Greek /ew/ (but see now Manaster Ramer and Michalove, in press). However, the number of examples cited by Olsen (although still small) seems to make up for the semantic latitude involved in each individual case. Third, once the *-dh- > -z- law is taken at all seriously, it becomes necessary to re-examine all the etymologies proposed long before Olsen, since it is entirely probable that more of these putative examples, and not just the two she cites will, at the end of the day, turn out to be correct. For example, as now argued by Olsen (1999:24) herself, awaz sa d ust e so eho elated to G eek ἄμα ς and hence also exemplify the same sound law. Fourth, there appears to exist at least one more example of the proposed sound law, which, moreover, does exhibit the kind of semantic obviousness and pho eti egula it that Olse s p oposed og ates a to so e i ds see to la k. A o di g to Wi te s law, Slavic e must come from *(H1)edhV-, and not, as some (e.g., Pokorny) used to assume, from *(H1)ed-. Under the sound law defended by Olsen, the same source is now available for Armenian ez . The fact that the latter is only attested in the post-classical language is no objection, since such a form could have e isted ea lie . Ma la guages ha e o e tha o e o d fo , o e of hi h a , e ause of its semantics or pragmatics, tend not to occur in such texts as we possess for Classical Armenian. The synchronic Slavic situation, where ra is used i ou ti g as i one, t o, th ee , hile e - is used i ua tif i g as i one sheep , a e a good a alogue, si e the ou ti g fo is u h less common in writing than it is in speech. If ez was originally used in (oral) counting in Armenian, while mi (< *smiH2) was used to quantify, then the lack of attestation of ez in the classical sources would not be a complete surprise. The existence of this Armeno-Slavic isogloss involving a protoform *(H1)edhV- would, moreover, be just one of a largish number of pivotal though rather neglected innovations shared by Armenian and Balto-Slavic, the most striking of which is perhaps the 1pl. nom. pronoun *mes pa e Illič-“ it č ,I a o , 1981, and myself in: Manaster Ramer 1992, 1993) and all of which show (if we are right) just how prescient Hübschmann was in his intuitions about the true position of Armenian within Indo-European, namely, as the first cousin of Balto-Slavic. But this is a different topic, to which we hope to return some other time. Fifth, although many if not most experts have been at least somewhat skeptical of the Bugge-Olsen law, the literature does not appear to list any plausible counterexamples, that is, examples of some treatment of PIE intervocalic *-dh- in Armenian as something other than -z- (although we are about to see that in reality there are such counterexamples, but only in a certain well-defined environment in which the Bugge-Olsen rule does not apply). This last point would be particularly significant because Armenian is notorious for the counterexamples it almost always throws up to any proposed sound law, as in the case of the long and still ongoing struggle to figure out the reflexes of the voiceless stops word-initially (of *t also medially and of *k in several positions), of sonorant-laryngeal se ue es lo g so o a ts , of i itial p e o ali as ell as fi al *s, of non-initial *w and initial *y, of interconsonantal laryngeals, of *wy and several other *Cw clusters, etc. For there to be no counterexamples to the *-dh- > -z- law would be almost uncanny. However, it is important to note that the examples we have involve *-dh- before certain vowels only. As it happens, Klingenschmitt (19??)i has argued that the sequence *-dhw- gives Armenian -rg-. Independently, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal, a brilliant scholarii but one who publishes few if any of his ideas, has suggested to us in personal communication that the complex Armenian 2pl. aorist middle ending -a-ru-kʿ is related to the PIE *-dhwe (the final -kʿ, of course, is just the Armenian plural ending -kʿ whose derivation from PIE *-(e)s was defended in detail in Manaster Ramer 1996a). Although Carrasquer Vidal originally argued for a rule whereby *-dh- always gives -r(-) in Armenian, in our formulation his etymology would suggest no more than that the lautgesetzlich reflex (whether with or without some further contextual restrictions) of PIE medial *-dhu-/-dhw- in Armenian is *-ru. This is not inco siste t ith Kli ge s h itt s p oposal, si e e ould ha e *-rg- vs. *-ru- depending on what follows. Moreover, there would be no contradiction with the Bugge-OIsen rule, since the latter would apply before proto-vowels other than *u/w. Three other etymologies, one entirely due to Carrasquer Vidal, one inspired by him but refined by us, and one of our own support this view. The first is aroyr ass < *H1reudh- ed; oppe o e . This seems quite straightforward, and the only reason for not accepting this as a native Armenian form (Olsen 1999:869) is simply the fact that no-o e had a ti ipated Ca as ue Vidal s sou d la . The second involves Arm. ayri ido , hi h a e ell e elated to the well-known IE etymon for this meaning. In our formulation, because of Greek ἠ ς a helo , hi h ust e a ddhi formation, we posit PIE *H1widh(u)weH2. Under well-established Armenian laws, with the addition of the new one (*-dhu-/*-dhw- > -ru-/-rw-), we would expect this to yield a pre-Armenian form *ə1wru, but the question is what this should then give in attested Armenian. The first difficulty is that Manaster Ramer and Michalove (in press) argue that Arm. kʿsan efle ts *H1 k . It might seem therefore that the *H1w- i the ido o d should also ha e gi e kʿ-, and hence we would face an output of the form **kʿri (assuming we can explain the final vowel, which we address below). Ho e e , e do t get **kʿri because Michalove and Manaste ‘a e s ule he e *H1w- > kʿ- did not apply until after the change of *w to *y in *ə1wru. Of course, there is still the question of just what precise rule is responsible for this change, but there is no question that such a rule existed, given examples like ayg da < *H2wso:s (Clackson 1994:223, Olsen 1999:108). Indeed there are precious few examples of Armenian (-)aw- reflecting PIE *(-)H(e)w- except in final position in -u stems like haw i d; g a dfathe . I a e e t if e follo Olse i assu i g that ayg < *aywu < *awwu < (*ə2wwu) < *H2wso:s, then we can equally well get *ayru < *awru < *awrua < *ə2wrua. The only remaining question is why the final vowel is -i and not **-uiii, and here the only answer is that there are no forms in -u reflecting, as we might expect, *-(u)wa: (i.e., *-(u)weH2) stems in Armenian. Another example is almost certainly the long-difficult ełr ho e . While this is o o l des i ed as a contamination of *medhu (which would have given **mezr u de Olse s la a d *melit (which would have given **mel or **meł), in reality there is a much simpler explanation which dispenses with positing *melit for any stage of Armenian. Under the law proposed here *medhu gave *merr, whence ełr can be derived by a simple dissimilation of the two rhotics. So far then, we have threeiv examples of *-dh- > -r- before *-u/w-v vs. at least four or five examples of *-dh- > -z- before other vowels. However, Carrasquer Vidal is certainly right to argue that *-dh- > *-ralso applied in the example of ayre-m I u . U fo tu atel , e ause of the st u tu e of the relevant parts of Armenian and IE verbal morphology, it is not immediately obvious just what vowel was at the relevant time following the *-dh- of *H2aydh-. In fact, even though ayrem itself is clearly analogical (since *H2ayro:(mi) would have yielded **ayrum), the decisive form was presumably the 3sg. *H2aydheti, and so we have to reckon with *-e-. We thus seem to end up with the conclusion that *-dh- > -r- before *-u/w- as well as *-e-, but that *-dh- > -z- before the other (or at least some of the other) vowels, notably *a (suzanem, eluzanem1). Such conditional splits are nothing new in Armenian or in any language, of course, though, of course, it remains devoutly to be wished for that someone come up with a coherent account of all the different splits in consonant reflexes conditioned by following vowels (involving *w (Eichner 1978, Olsen 1986vi), *s (Olsen ??, Manaster Ramer 1996a), *dh, etc.) in Armenian (work which we have had in hand for some time). Of course, the contrast between suzem and ayrem is potentially embarrassingvii, thus giving us yet another reason for being somewhat cautious in advancing the current proposal. However, it seems to us all but inescapable that, in some way, both -r- and -z- will turn out to be conditioned lautgesetzlich reflexes of *-dh- in Armenian, confirming that Bugge and Olsen as well as Klingenschmitt and Carrasquer Vidal were partly right -- as we tried to suggest with the title of our little essay. 1 The vowel originally involved in z and ez is not clear. References Bugge, Sophus. 1889. Beiträge zur etymologischen Erläuterung der armenischen Sprache. Christiania: J. Dawbad. Clackson, J. 1994. The linguistic relationship between Armenian and Greek. Oxford-Cambridge MA.: Blackwell. Eichner, Heiner. 1978. D e ur o er a sche Wur el * reu ,hell ache ’. Sprache 24, 2: 144-162. Greppin, John A.C. 1980. The origin of Armenian z from IE *gh and *dh. First International Conference on Armenian Linguistics: Proceedings (ed. John A.C. Greppin), 131-138. Delmar NY: Caravan Books. Hübschmann, Heinrich. 1875. Über die Stellung des Armenischen im Kreise der indogermanischen Sprachen. Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung 23: 5-49. Reprinted (1976) in: Heinrich Hübschmann, Kleine Schriften zum Armenischen, 1-45. Hildesheim: Georg Olms. Illič-“ it č, Vladisla M. . Op srav e ja os ra česk ja kov se o a sk j, kar vel’sk j, oevropejsk j, ural’sk j, rav jsk j, al ajsk j . Moscow: Nauka. Ivanov, Vjačesla V. 1979. [Rev e of Ill č-Sv č 19 ]. ti ologija , -184 I a o , Vjačesla V. . Slavjanskij, baltijskij i rannebalkanskij glagol. Indoevropejskie istoki. Moscow: Nauka. Jasanoff, Jay. 1979. Notes on the Armenian personal endings. KZ 93: 133-149. Klingenschmitt, Gert. 1982. Das altarmenische Verbum. Wiesbaden. Manaster Ramer, Alexis. 1993. O Ill č-Sv č’s Nos ra c heor . Studies in Language 17: 205-249. Russian tr. i : Mosko skij li g ističeskij žu al : -98. Manaster Ramer, Alexis. 1996a. Armenian final */s/ -> /kʿ/. JIES 24: 361-398. Manaster Ramer, Alexis. 1996b. Sap r’s class f ca o s: a a a he o her Nadene languages. Anthropological Linguistics 38: 1-38. Manaster Ramer, Alexis and Peter Michalove. In press. Ar e a kʿ < * 1w? Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft. Michalove, Peter, Ralf-Stefan Georg and Alexis Manaster Ramer. 1998. Current issues in linguistic taxonomy. Annual review of Anthropology 27: 451-472. Olsen, Birgit Anette. 1986. The Armenian continuations of Indo-European intervocalic *w, AAL 7. Olsen, Birgit Anette. 1989. Three notes on Armenian historical phonology. Annual of Armenian Linguistics 10: 526. Olsen, Birgit Anette, 1999. The noun in Biblical Armenian. Berlin-New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Pokorny, Julius. 1848-1969. Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Bern: A. Franck. i I assu i g Kli ge s h itt is ea t, ut I do t ha e it at disposal. I have let this stand from the o igi al te t. I ha e, ho e e , e o ed all o u e es of the ph ase D . Carrasquer Vidal. iii The *-u- does appear, however, in the oblique forms of this word (arwoy, ar oĵ), as it does in all similar Armenian feminine words ending in -i. iv Four, if we include the 2pl. aorist middle ending. More are mentioned in my earlier article on this subject (such as the imperative -r < *-dhi). v The word aroyr is an i-stem (G. aruri), so this is not strictly true. It would be better to say: in the neighborhood of *-u/w-. vi I op of the d aft, I had added the follo i g ote he e: *Vwa, *Vwo > Vg, *Vwe, *Vwi > Vw; *iWV > iw. Maybe similarly with *-dh-? . I suppose I ea t that the de elop e ts of *w described by Olsen might be almost exactly parallel (mutatis mutandis) to the developments of *-dh-: -z- before a and o, -r- before e and before or after i (and of course u). vii Not necessarily, if the preceding vowel is also a factor, as it probably is. ii