The palatal sham :) (Re: [tied] Re: Albanian (1))

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 14:13:01 +0000, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...>
> wrote:
>
> >I believe Miguel said something similar happened in some Semitic
> >plurals: a H- slapped on in front to mask the internal misery of

the

> >root?
>
> I suppose you mean ?a- (e.g. broken plurals of the type nahr ~ ?

anha:r).

> The glottal stop is automatic, the cluster breaker is prefixed a-.

The

> phenomenon is not limited to broken plurals, but affects all root

patterns

> that would otherwise have had initial CC- (e.g. ?a-rba`- "4").
>
> That is of course the big difference with IE, where initial

clusters are

> quite common. Glen's proposal of "automatic" o-prosthesis does not

explain

> why we don't have o- in the vast majority of cases (paradigmatic

Ausgleich

> won't explain *ph2tér- instead of +oph2tér-).
>

Which would be another reason to look for possible sources of loan
(specifically Semitic) for IE roots that seem to prefix vowels (or
laryngeals).

Torsten