Re: Why Agnus Dei, not Agne Dei?

From: Miguel Carrasquer (mcv_at_wxs.nl)
Date: 11/25/04 

Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 02:42:24 +0100

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 22:06:44 -0000, "Neeraj Mathur"
<neemathur@hotmail.com> wrote:

>I thought of there being six: a-stems, o-stems, consonant stems, i-stems,
>u-stems, and e-stems. During the attested literature period the i-stems
>complete their merger with the consonants, thus leaving the five we are
>familiar with.
>
>For deriving them, the consonant stems have undergone massive levelling from
>Indo-European times, so it is no longer useful to treat them as anything
>other than a single declension from a synchronic perspective (with a focus
>of, say, the time of the Early Principate). The e-stems I don't really know
>what to do with: I know that dies is a back-formed word (from *Dye:m, the
>odd IE acc of *Dyeus 'Zeus'), but I know nothing about the etymologies of
>any other fifth declension words.

There are a few which are variants of (y)a:-stems, such as
mate:rie:s (mat:eria), for which Lithuanian e:-stems (and
some Old Irish forms) are a reasonable parallel. re:s is a
laryngeal i-stem (*reh1i-). The rest (mostly ending in
-ie:s) are mysterious. My own theory is that they are a
special kind of i-stems (c.q. i:-stems).

Detailed explanation if anybody's interested:

PIE compound nouns (root + suffix) could be stressed on the
root (e.g. *hák^-men- "stone", called proterodynamic) or on
the suffix (e.g. *ph2-tér- "father", called hysterodynamic)
-- it is unknown why, may have something to do with animacy.

When case endings containing a vowel were added, the stress
shifted to the right. For suffix-stressed nouns, the
paradigm follows easily:
nom. *p@2té:r (< *pax-tár-z)
acc. *p@2térm (< *pax-tár-m)
voc. *p@2ter (< *pax-tár-0)
gen. *p@2trés (< *pax-tar-ás)
dat. *p@2tréi (< *pax-tar-á + i)
ins. *p@2tréh1 (< *pax-tar-át)

Root-stressed nouns, however, lengthend the posttonic
["svarita"] vowel (unless it was word-final):
nom. *h2ák^mo:n (< *xák-mân-z)
acc. *h2ák^monm (< *xák-mân-m)
voc. *h2ák^mon (< *xák-mân-0)
gen. *@2k^ménos (< *xak-mán-âs)
loc. *@2k^méni (< *xak-mán-a + i)
abl. *@2k^ménod (< *xak-mán-ât)

The plural and dual are a bit more complicated, so I'll skip
that part here.

The singular itself also has complications. Svarita
lengthening does not take place if the root syllable is long
or heavy (ends in -CC), which gives rise to other paradigms
besides the standard PD (proterodynamic) and HD
(hysterodynamic). For instance:

(root with long *a: [= o/e static paradigm])
N/A *wódr (*wá:d-an-0)
G. *wédnos (*wa:d-án-âs => *wéd-@n-a:s)
(root with long *u: [= o/0 paradigm])
N. *póntoHs (*pú:nt-ax-z)
A. *póntHm (*pú:nt-ax-m)
G. *pn.tHós (*pu:nt-áx-âs => *p@nt-@x-á:s)
(root with long *i: [= e:/0 paradigm])
N/A *ké:r(d) (*kí:rd-0)
G. *kr.dés (*ki:rd-ás)
(heavy root: [= AD, amphidynamic])
N/A *k^ér@2-sr. (*kárx-san=0)
G. *k^r.h2-sn-ós (*karx-sán-âs => k@rx-s@n-á:s)
[there are more...]

Now roots ending with the suffix *-i are mostly long/heavy
roots, so the paradigm is:
N. *ghóstis (*ghá:st-i-z)
A. *ghóstim (*ghá:st-i-m)
G. *ghósteys (*ghá:st-i(y)-as)
[The accent probably didn't shift in i-stems, as *i was not
really a vowel]

Now a _light_ root would have shown "svarita" lengtening,
e.g.:

N. spák-î-z > *spék^-ye:s
A. spák-î-m > *spék^-ye:m
G. spák-îy-as > *spék^-e:ys,

which gives Lat. specie:s. Presumably, in most other IE
languages, the /e:/ was shortened in unstressed position,
and then /ye/ > /i/ (which is regular), so that these forms
merged with the "standard" i-stem nouns in -is, -im, -eis.

Similarly for stems in *-ih2 (svarita variant *-îh2, giving
nom. *-ye:h2 > *-ye: ~ *-yeh2 > *-ya:,
acc. *-ye:h2m > *-ye:m ~ *-yeh2m > *-ya:m).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@wxs.nl

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