Re: [tied] Re: Syncope

On Tue, 30 Mar 2004 enlil@... wrote:

> Jens:
> > I do not think anything in our discussion is affected by the
> > introduction of these details (which I have been accepting all
> > along, by the way).
>
> Ooops, one more note. Yes, it _is_ affected. In our discussion
> of *wertmn, you wanted me to explain its derivation with
> the assumption that because it operates under normal
> quantitative ablaut that it must date to preSyncope times.
> With the examples of strive/strove and mouse/mice, we
> see that this is an empty assumption and not necessarily
> true.

No, we were speaking of *wert-mn as a type. And if you accept drive/drove
you have accepted the type seen in strive/strove and may begin to work
out real rules that brought it (i.e., the type) about.

> In my theory, it isn't true at all because Quantitative
> Ablaut (minus reduction of *e/*o to zero) predates Syncope
> by an important length of time. So our discussion is being
> affected by these details. If you are agreeing with me here,
> then you shouldn't have been debating against that point,
> but you were. Unless you have some added reason to think
> that *wertmn is particularly ancient besides ablaut.

I do not see any reason to doubt the authenticity of *wert-mn. And I see
very strong reasons to suspect the language had at least *some* words of
that structure since it allowed this one to be created. If you mean
lengthening when you write Quantitative Ablaut, I'd say yes,
the nominative lengthening applied to an intermediate stage in the
vanishing process e > o > zero, so that from unaccented /e/ we get the
result /o:/. Did you see a need to tell me that?


Jens