Reconstruction talk:Proto-Indo-European/ǵews-

ǵewsonom

Could we cite *ǵewsonom as the Proto-Indo-European ancestor of Proto-Germanic *keusaną? --Victar (talk) 20:24, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

I doubt it, unless you can find a language outside of Germanic that has a word that descends from it. As far as I know, the -onom suffix isn't reconstructable for PIE proper, but only for Germanic. PIE didn't have any infinitive suffixes, and what it did have were verbal nouns. That's why the infinitives in various IE languages have different sources: Germanic has -nom (not actually -onom because the first -o- is the thematic vowel of the verb stem), Slavic has -tis (which are regular verbal/abstract nouns in other languages, like Germanic), Italic/Latin has -si which is a neuter i-stem suffix I don't know the origin of (nor any cognates outside Italic). So it is really quite a murky topic and it's hard to establish anything for PIE as a whole because there is so much variation. You also have to take into account that what we call verbs were actually aspect stems or roots in PIE. The suffix -tis, at least, was attached straight to a root, not to an aspect stem, so such a suffix did not originally have a thematic vowel before it (so that's why there's not -adiz/-aþiz in Germanic). If the -nom suffix was originally a verbal noun suffix as is generally suggested, then it would have been attached straight to the root and not to an aspect stem. So it would have been *ǵewsnom and not *ǵewsonom anyway. The thematic vowel of the verb would only have been inserted within Germanic as part of the evolution of Germanic verbs (which, among other things, involved converting all athematic aspect stems to thematic ones). —CodeCat 21:41, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

That I all understand. Are you saying though, that *-nom is not a PIE verbal noun suffix, because if it is, it seems reasonable to build reconstructions using it, regardless of what the suffix meaning became in PGm. --Victar (talk) 02:12, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

It probably was a verbal noun suffix but unless there are cognates elsewhere that demonstrate it, we can only guess. Do you know of any other IE subfamilies that use it? —CodeCat 02:22, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Latin has -num, ex. donum, and Sanskrit has -नम् (-nam), ex. स्थानम् (sthānam). --Victar (talk) 02:56, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Ringe says this about it: "The present infinitive [of Germanic], like those of nearly all other IE languages, clearly reflects a derived verbal noun. But wheareas neuter verbal nouns in *-no-m arereasonably well attested (cf. Brugmann 1906: 260-4, 266-9), they were formed directly to the root in PIE not to aspect stems. In PGmc the formation has apparently been adjusted so as to include the thematic present stem vowel; thus we have pre-PGmc *-o-no-m > PGmc *-aną." It looks to me like the two words you mentioned could be examples of this suffix. Can you find any others? —CodeCat 03:20, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Have a look at *ǵr̥h₂nóm. You explain the etymology as a "substantivised form of *ǵr̥h₂nós." Is that your theory or did you glean that somewhere? --Victar (talk) 03:30, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not really sure. But I'm wondering about the ablaut of the root and the accentuation. The suffix of the adjective is known to be accented -nós and is added to the zero grade of the root. On the other hand, the suffix -nom seems to be added to the e- or o-grade (the Latin and Sanskrit examples could be either), and seems to have been root-accented as well to judge from Germanic and its voiceless Verner alternants (i.e. *keusaną not **keuzaną). This is expected because e-grades tend to be accented. So the PIE pre-form of the Sanskrit words were presumably *déh₃nom and *stéh₂nom, whereas the adjectival suffix would have given *dh₃nós (> Latin *danus) and *sth₂nós (> Sanskrit st(h)ina) which is quite different. It's possible that there is some kind of derivational relationship between these two suffixes, as it's not uncommon in PIE for one word form to be derived from another through a change in ablaut pattern. But that remains to be confirmed... (A piece of trivia: although Germanic *stāną appears to be a perfect cognate to Sanskrit sthānam, this can't be true because ā normally becomes ō in Germanic. Germanic ā is instead derived from earlier -aja- which lost -j- and then contracted. The pre-form is actually *sth₂-yo-nom, which is a Germanic innovation.) —CodeCat 03:44, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

So, I believe we can say with some confidence that *-nom is a valid PIE verbal noun suffix, no? --Victar (talk) 03:53, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes. Although we'd need some more examples of it to establish which grade of the root it used and where the accent was placed. Almost certainly on the root, but what evidence beside Germanic is there? And to reconstruct any actual words, we'd need a word that is attested in several branches. —CodeCat 03:56, 8 December 2012 (UTC)