Reconstruction talk:Proto-Indo-European/ǵʰh₂éns
Add topicLatest comment: 3 months ago by Vindafarna
Should this better be *ǵʰh₂ens? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:38, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
- It doesn't appear that this noun ablauted at all, though, even though it was an athematic noun. That should indicate that the root vowel has to be -a-. —CodeCat 21:42, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
- Genitive *ǵʰh₂nsos is sometimes taken to explain the origin of depatalization of *ǵʰ in Slavic ([1] p. 119). At any case, absence of evidence is not an evidence in favor of something else. The existence of PIE *a is controversial by itself, and reconstructing *ǵʰans- is really bad lingustics IMHO. If all of the descendant forms can be derived from *ǵʰh₂ens- (which I'm not sure, so I'm asking :), there is no reason to postulate *ǵʰans-. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 22:07, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
- The problem with the zero grade h₂ is that you'd expect -i- in Sanskrit (and maybe Iranian), but there is no trace of that. And what about the Ancient Greek stem? —CodeCat 22:09, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
- Sanskrit and Greek can be derived from ǵʰh₂en-s-, later being generalized to a-stem and n-stem respectively. Just because there are no (obvious) traces of ablaut it doesn't mean that it wasn't there, or that there was medial *-a- present. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 22:36, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
- Would it at all be possible to not exclusively include Leiden school sources for stuff like this? Perhaps we could include both reconstructions — the Leiden one and the one with an *-a-? I think this is giving undue weight to Leiden's disbelief in *a. Moreover, not everyone is convinced that roots could begin in such a way, and Ringe, in his review of Schrijver's Development of Laryngeals in Latin called it a "manifest absurdity." I don't want to get into a debate about this stuff, but I think that, at the very least, we should include the alternative reconstruction with *a, which is held by most people outside Leiden (and even some inside Leiden, at least when I studied there...) Perhaps we could add a note about how the reconstruction with *a is really only a problem when using Leiden's interpretation of the PIE phonemic inventory. But again, at the very least, Ringe's construction should be included, as I have heard both Lubotsky and Pronk refer to Ringe as 'very competent'. Vindafarna (talk) 05:33, 8 November 2025 (UTC)
- Sanskrit and Greek can be derived from ǵʰh₂en-s-, later being generalized to a-stem and n-stem respectively. Just because there are no (obvious) traces of ablaut it doesn't mean that it wasn't there, or that there was medial *-a- present. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 22:36, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
- The problem with the zero grade h₂ is that you'd expect -i- in Sanskrit (and maybe Iranian), but there is no trace of that. And what about the Ancient Greek stem? —CodeCat 22:09, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
- Genitive *ǵʰh₂nsos is sometimes taken to explain the origin of depatalization of *ǵʰ in Slavic ([1] p. 119). At any case, absence of evidence is not an evidence in favor of something else. The existence of PIE *a is controversial by itself, and reconstructing *ǵʰans- is really bad lingustics IMHO. If all of the descendant forms can be derived from *ǵʰh₂ens- (which I'm not sure, so I'm asking :), there is no reason to postulate *ǵʰans-. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 22:07, 5 June 2013 (UTC)