Re: [tied] Re: IE lexical accent

On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 enlil@... wrote:

> Richard:
> > Why? The initial cluster tkn- exists in either Russian or Polish.
>
> Yes, that's great. And we know how twisted Polish is ;) but the thing
> is that even though we might say this "cluster" exists in some languages,
> to call it a cluster to me seems a bit misleading phonetically. I
> honestly don't know how one's tongue can contort in such a way as to
> pronounce tkn- without a vowel somewhere in it. Again, I'm speaking on a
> more subphonemic level. It might be analysed as a cluster but I don't
> think it truely is.

I haven't got it in my language, but I can easily do it. I can even do it
in several ways, with the stops released or unreleased. You may want to
look at a description of Georgian or Itelmin.

>
> Actually, thinking more on Jen's version of EA, I think I have an idea.
> We can think of a schwa in EA as the "non-vowel", his subphonemic vowel.
> It is placed in syllables which otherwise would be zero and awkward. So,
> in the case of a root *nat- and a suffix *-R, it can only become *nat&R
> because **natR would violate the syllabics. (Yes, I'm aware of French
> "quatre" but I'm not speaking of French so go with me for a sec on this).
>
> So, now, let's say that you want to add another "consonant-only" suffix
> like *-m. We would get *natR&m because the *& is only a go-between vowel
> to even out the syllables in the otherwise blech-looking **natRm (that
> would never have existed in any prestage of EA). Here *& goes between *R
> and *m because this evens out the syllables optimally to produce C&C
> in the second syllable.
>
> However, with *alu- + *-R, we get *aluR, and with *alu- + *-R + *-m,
> we'd get *aluRm. Why? Because a syllable with a real vowel *u _can_
> tolerate a CVCC syllable. I think I get it.
>
> Would that now make sense, Jens? In this way, we don't need a ridiculously
> vowelless prestage [...].

That makes excellent sense, and it is pretty much common opinion. However,
I believe there are cases for which one needs the ridiculously vowelless
prestage also. I have assumed the same for pre-IE, but I have later
modified it so as to mean that the extreme reconstructions do not have to
be anything more than bugbears, i.e. warning signs showing what the
language would have come to be like if the changes that produced more
normal syllable structures had not occurred.

Off topic for this list, there is no evidence for suffixal status of the
last consonant of either *natR- or *aluR- in Eskimo.

Jens