Melchert Corrigenda II

On pg. 54 (and again on pg 402 for another purpose) I cite the supposed Hittite form tarh- 'conquer' as an example of the preservation of a consonantal reflex of medial *h2 in Hittite, but Alwin Kloekhorst 2008:835–9 has shown that there is no such verb, but only a tarhu-/taruh- reflecting a u-present *terh2u-.

Further on pg. 54 I state that medial *h3 was loss without exception in Anatolian, but the question of the reflex of medial *h3 needs to be reconsidered. The meaning of CLuv. ta-tarh- as established by Kloekhorst is 'break' not 'conquer' and therefore might be compared with the family of Grk. τιτρώσκω ᾽I wound'. This suggests that *h3 may have had a consonantal reflex after a sononant.

Melchert Corrigenda I

Craig Melchert, the Diebold Professor of Indo-European at UCLA, has kindly forwarded a list of addenda and corrigenda which I will be posting beginning with this one.

On pg. 35 I quote Craig's famous 1987 article on the three-fold treatment of the voiceless velars in Luvian, but this needs modification.  Contrary to the claim of that article there is no good evidence for the affrication of the voiceless palatovelar before a back vowel. In particular, the supposed case of *-(i)k'o- > Luv. -(i)zza- ~ Lyc. -(i)s(e)- does not stand up. The Luvian suffix -(i)zza- probably goes back to *-tyeh2 and the Lycian suffix -(i)s(e)-, which makes abstracts and place names, continues *-sh2o-. Instead it now seems likely that there was a conditioned fronting of the voiceless palatovelar before front vowel (Luv. ziyari ‘lies’ (C) ~ Lyc. sijẽni), yod (wazi- ‘request’ (H) < *wek'-ye/o-), w (azu(wa)- ‘horse’ (H)< *ék'wo-) and syllabic sonorants (zurnid- ‘horn’ (H) < *k'r̥ng-id-, zanta 'down' < *k'm̥t-).  Thus Luvian and Lycian are like mirror images of Albanian with palatalization differential affecting the palatovelars. We still have a ternary reflex, just not an unconditioned one.

Update on Tagliavini's Diplomatic Service

In a previous post I speculated the Carlo Tagliavini's mission in Poland for the Italian foreign ministry in March of 1939 might have been a cover story for his involvement in preparations for the Italian invasion of Albania.  This is incorrect. In fact, the Italian foreign minister Galeazzo Ciano did visit Warsaw starting February 25, 1939 and this is presumably the mission which Tagliavini was involved in. Ciano hoped that war between Poland and Germany might still be avoided, but when he got to Warsaw he thought the Poles too resistant to giving in to German demands  (tutto rimane bloccato dall'antigermanismo qui radicato as he reported in a phone call to Mussolini ((Borejsza 1981:33)) and predicted war would not be long in coming. 

On the subject of Tagliavini during the run-up to World War II, I should mention that Tagliavini and, presumably through his influence, Ciano tried to get the German foreign ministry to request that the authorities allow the Austrian Albanologist of Jewish origins Norbert Jokl to flee to Albania where a position had been created for him.  But this intercession was unsuccessful and Jokl was to perish in Nazi hands.

Medial -ur-

On pg. 408 in discussing the desideratives in -uriō, I mention that the short u of this suffix violates Latin phonotactic constraints  since the only short vowel normally permitted before an r in a medial syllable is e.   As I mention in the footnote there are of course obvious analogical cases like augur, auguris, but there is perhaps another source for this sequence.  Original u like all short vowels became e (*swekurī 'father-in-law' gen. sg. > socerī), presumably by general weakening to i and lowering before, but if a labiovelar, and presumably also the  labiovelar glide, precedes the medial vowel the outcome is u, e.g. *per-kwatiō  > percutiō, iekwVna:num > iecunanum (glossed victimarium (Fest. p. 114 M) and derived from the old oblique stem of iecur according to Alan Nussbaum p.c.). What would happen if a u of this sort were followed by an r?  There are no clear cases but it is possible that if the u arose after or as the result of weakening, as is likely, it would be retained. A potential case might be decuria if from *dekwiria (more about that elsewhere).  This idea doesn't lead immediately to an immediate solution to the -uriō question, but it does open some interesting vistas.

The stem-vowel of the gerund and gerundive

On pg. 444 I address the variation in the vowel before -nd- in gerunds and gerundives formed to 3rd and 4th conjugation verbs.  In addition to the observations recorded there I should also have mentioned the discussion of Alfonso Traina in the 2nd edition of his book, Forma e suono. Da Plauto a Pascoli. Bologna: Patron, 129–143. Based chiefly on an examination of the invariant cases of transmission in the manuscripts of Terence, Traina establishes the following tendencies:

After -u, -ṷ-, -qu- the form is always -end- (vivendus).

After a syllable containing o or u the form is predominantly -end-

(ducendus).

After i the form is predominantly -und- (faciundus).

Thus it seems likely that the choice of vowel was governed largely by avoidance of two segments with identical values for roundness.

Lesser-known Historical Grammars of Latin XIII

The book pictured at left was published in 1962 by the  Italian linguist Carlo Tagliavini.  It is the 3rd edition of a work first published in 1938 and 1939. Tagliavini was a master expositor and like his outstanding Le origine delle lingue neolatine this book is a very readable and well organized survey of the material. The most interesting fact I picked up from this book was Tagliavini's statement in the preface that he was not able to complete the section on verbal morphology in 1939 (later added in the second edition of 1949) because he was called away in March of that year on a mission for the Ministero degli Esteri in Poland.  I haven't been able to find anything about this mission in other sources although I haven't examined Jerzy Borejsza's book about Poland, Germany and Italy on the eve of  WWII.  Interestingly, Tagliavini was a noted Albanologist and Italy's invasion of Albania took place in April of 1939.  Could this have been the real reason for his sudden departure? Pure speculation.

iuxtā

On pg. 357 I give the proto-form of iuxtā as *iugistā. The zero-grade u with a short vowel goes 

against de Vaan 2008:318 and Watkins 1975:530 who specifically notes "a ma connaissance aucune évidence ne nous empêche de postuler un ū longe." But the evidence of Old French, which has joste 'next to' and the derived verb joster 'put side by side, joust' points clearly to a short vowel. See the Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français s.v. Forms with u in the various Romance languages are secondary. This fact has interesting consequences for the morphological analysis of this form. It makes connection with the neuter s-stem iūgera even more difficult, but it also doesn't exactly favor Watkins's deverbal superlative analysis since those forms too tend to have full-grades. 

In any case connection with the root of iungō is unavoidable and this means that the g of iug- has been devoiced before a voiceless consonant without the operation of Lachmann's Law.  The absence of lengthening—cf. fūsus from *fud-to- with LL—might be explained in a number of different ways.  It might be the case that LL didn't apply to secondary sequences arising by syncope (hence maximus, despite its lone apex, really doesn't have a long vowel). Or it might be the case that it did apply to such sequences but only if the voiced stop was temporarily reintroduced on the basis of related forms.  In the case of iuxtā the derivational connection with iungō was obscure enough that this didn't happen.