From: Glen Gordon
Message: 8407
Date: 2001-08-09
>So, to make a long story longer, Germanic languages could very... oh yes, and don't forget the initial accent which appears
>well have been affected by Finnic in regards to vowel harmony.
>From: "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>_________________________________________________________________
>Reply-To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
>To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: [tied] Affects of immigrant communities in language change
>Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2001 16:43:17
>
>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.)
>