Re: [tied] Re: Slavic accentology

On Mon, 13 Jun 2005 07:16:26 +0200, you wrote:

>I meant: are there any examples in any language of a
>geminate consonant (I'll also accept a consonant cluster)
>being simplified with compensatory lengthening of the
>_following_ vowel? I'm aware of thousands of soundlaws, but
>I don't recall ever running into this one. Compensatory
>lengthening of the preceeding vowel, yes. No effect on
>neighbouring vowels, of course. But lengthening of the next
>vowel? I find it very unlikely from a phonetic point of
>view, and it certainly doesn't seem to happen in Slavic
>cases like *attikos > otIcI or *dubno > dUno, *supnos >
>sUnU.

It's certainly unusual, but I can quote a case from some dialects of
Finnish where G disappears after liquids with lengthening of the
following vowel, e.g. *jalGan > jalaan (standard Finnish jalan 'foot,
leg (agsg)'). The nsg is jalka — *G is the weak grade that appears
before a closed syllable.

Kim Bastin