Reconstruction talk:Proto-Slavic/gaťę

PIE origin from *ǵʰeh₁- vs *gʷeh₂-

@Fay Freak: Did you read somewhere that Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰeh₁- (“to walk”) is the origin of Proto-Slavic *gaťę? The majority of the sources (Vasmer, ESSJa, BER, Snoj + Derksen in reference to the Baltic data) propose Proto-Indo-European *gʷeh₂- (“to step, to stand”) instead. I haven't read all the references that you have provided, but at least in principle the later matches better phonetically. Probably, we should stick to it.

PS It may be also worth separating the dual *gaťi from the plural *gaťę to avoid confusion? Безименен (talk) 13:06, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

@Bezimenen: No, I didn’t pay attention and just took the “go” to which the Germanic “go” has been put. (Aren’t the two related?)

Nieminen remarks that to his day in some primitive people trousers are from three parts, hence there can be a trial instead of dual. I am uncomfortable with a dual reconstruction since it is not reflected and would be only assumed. I don’t understand why you wrote “relic dual” to the Bulgarian and Macedonian forms: The plurals look like this in Bulgarian and Macedonian (from analogy to the *y in the hard a-paradigms, at least that is how I always understood the Russian -и endings of soft a-stems to come from, not from the dual like some Serbo-Croatian plural endings), though the duals would be inherited like this. And the Old East Slavic is how I assumed a late Old East Slavic spelling to look (like Russian, where it is the plural).

What I didn’t understand though is why there is the reconstruction *gaťě (with ѣ (ě)); and before I replaced them, Wiktionary had *gaťe (wrongly thinking it is a neuter singular?). Do you know what the dot is on ę̇ the inflection template wants me to use? Fay Freak (talk)

@Bezimenen: I found it at w:History of Proto-Slavic#Nasalization: “a high-mid nasal vowel *ę̇, higher than the low-mid vowel *ę. In South Slavic, these two vowels merged as *ę. Elsewhere, however, *ę̇ was denasalized, merging with *ě.” Doesn’t it actually mean we should have a South Slavic and a North Slavic Proto-Slavic form? The templates do not allow it though. And it is easier to just note it at WT:ASLA (although I do not know why it is *ę̇ and not *ę̆, perhaps due to some author)s)). This would be the first entry with *ę̇ it appears. Fay Freak (talk) 14:01, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: I gave the Bulgarian, Macedonian forms as dual, because the actual (uncountable) plural in Bulg. is technically гащя́ (gaštjá). The disctinction between countable and uncountable in Eastern South Slavic typically only occurs for masc. nouns, but occasionally it is preserved in other genders, too. га́щи (gášti) - гащя́ (gaštjá) is one of these exceptions. Anyway, it is not a big deal. I also see that Russian, Slovene, etc. have reflexes of normal ā-stem plural *gaty, so there are too many subtleties to make account of, regardless. The PIE root was the bigger issue. Безименен (talk) 14:23, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

@Bezimenen: For Slovene only superficially. For the Russian form I do not think speakers at the time the form га́ти (gáti) existed even made an assumption whether it is a soft a-stem or an i-stem, which is identical in the plural; the speaker’s mind does not work like Zaliznyak’s classification or similar, so speculations from this about the wordˌs etymology from a -ть stem have been displaced. The Russian stem though is a soft-stem *гать (*gatʹ) or *гатя (*gatja), palatalized paradigms not existing that way in Proto-Slavic, while the Slovene is a new hard one, as Slovene acquired new hardness as opposed to the Russian palatalization (yes, this is a South vs. North phenomenon): it would be like in Russian *гатя (*gatja) with /tʲ/, just that this palatalization does not exist in Slovene so it is hard instead, so I don’t think *gaty existed, these forms are posterior.

I have still the open question though whether we should have *gaťę̇ and make it official by adding it to WT:ASLA or *gaťę jointly with *gaťě and change the inflection tables to show both endings. Your chance to say something at Wiktionary talk:About Proto-Slavic! Over all the years nobody has opened up about this incongruency. I don’t have a preference but something must be ironed out. Fay Freak (talk) 14:57, 13 September 2021 (UTC)