From: Dennis Poulter
Message: 1620
Date: 2000-02-22
Just a note on the statement made by John, re the VCCV--- structure of "Pre-Hellenic", and the C-C-C structure of Semitic/Egyptian.
This sequence VCCV--- can very easily be derived from C-C-C languages such as Semitic or Egyptian. One only has to look at all the Arabic loan words in Spanish : alcalde, alcazar, almohada, etc. etc.
Classical Arabic and modern Egyptian, and I believe also Ancient Egyptian (I cannot speak for ancient West Semitic dialects) do not allow any syllable to begin with more than one consonant. Vowel alternations, which also include "no vowel" as an alternant, and consonantal prefixes and infixes, can lead to an inadmissible CC-, in which case a prothetic vowel is added (a prothetic consonant is also added if necessary, but this is invariably, in Arabic, a glottal stop). This is in fact the case with the Arabic definite article in the above Spanish examples - the /a/ is a prothetic vowel, the article is only really the /l/.
Regards
Dennis