Marc V:
>Glen, do you think some peculiarities of Germanic (initial stress, �,
>�...?) could be explained by a Finnish-Estonian or so speaking people
>adopting an IE language?
I believe it's quite probable that FinnoUgric and Germanic
languages affected each other, yes (after 2000 BCE).
Danny:
>However, Umlaut and vowel harmony are not related.
>
>Umlaut results from the loss of final vowels in Proto-Germanic, >leaving
>behind a shift in the initial vowel.
Erh, Danny... I think that's pretty much the same thing. That's
how vowel harmony appears to have arisen in Uralic and Altaic
(and possibly early IndoTyrrhenian in connection with the
origin of e/o ablaut in IE conjugation, if I had my way).
When the non-initial vowels start affecting the initial vowel,
we have "vowel harmony", _period_. Even if the final vowel is
lost, the fact is that initial vowel has been harmonized with the
others.
Danny:
>Vowel harmony, on the other hand, affects the non-initial and suffixal
>vowels mostly. Uralic languages classify front, back and neutral vowels.
>In Finnish, if the stem has a front vowel and the suffix has a back vowel,
>the back vowel is fronted: i-a > i-�, i-o > i-�, i-u > i-�. Turkic has
>backing of the vowel /i/ with back vowels, so where e-i remains e-i, a-i
>becomes
>a-I (dotless i). There are some more rules related to rounding of vowels,
>but I forgot what they are exactly.
Right, but this gets a little complex and confusing. In Altaic,
it appears to me as though there was not only what we might call
"regressive fronting assimilation" (*i-u > *i"-u) but also a
later process of "progressive rounding assimilation"
(*i"-u > *i"-i").
In Proto-Uralic, the only vowel harmony I see having happened
is regressive fronting assimilation where the frontness or backness
of the secondary vowels is carried back onto the initial vowel
(basically, anticipatory assimilation). However, later languages
like Finnic languages have probably built onto this vowel harmony,
adding new dynamics to it such as alternating suffixes (-ta/-ta")
that match the front-back quality of the roots' vowels. This
is a progressive and not a regressive vowel harmony.
(And thinking on the origins of e/o ablaut in IndoTyrrhenian lead
me to the understanding that IT also used regressive assimilation
via influence with Proto-AltaicGilyak, way back when.)
So, to make a long story longer, Germanic languages could very
well have been affected by Finnic in regards to vowel harmony.
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gLeNny gEe
...wEbDeVEr gOne bEsErK!
home:
http://glen_gordon.tripod.com
email:
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