Re: [tied] Affects of immigrant communities in language change

From: Glen Gordon
Message: 8407
Date: 2001-08-09

I said:
>So, to make a long story longer, Germanic languages could very
>well have been affected by Finnic in regards to vowel harmony.

... oh yes, and don't forget the initial accent which appears
to have always been the tendency in Central to East Europe before
the IE and Finnic anyway... but you can take that or leave it.

-------------------------------------------------
gLeNny gEe
...wEbDeVEr gOne bEsErK!

home: http://glen_gordon.tripod.com
email: glengordon01@...
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>From: "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
>Reply-To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
>To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: [tied] Affects of immigrant communities in language change
>Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2001 16:43:17
>
>Marc V:
> >Glen, do you think some peculiarities of Germanic (initial stress, �,
> >�...?) could be explained by a Finnish-Estonian or so speaking people
> >adopting an IE language?
>
>I believe it's quite probable that FinnoUgric and Germanic
>languages affected each other, yes (after 2000 BCE).
>
>Danny:
> >However, Umlaut and vowel harmony are not related.
> >
> >Umlaut results from the loss of final vowels in Proto-Germanic, >leaving
> >behind a shift in the initial vowel.
>
>Erh, Danny... I think that's pretty much the same thing. That's
>how vowel harmony appears to have arisen in Uralic and Altaic
>(and possibly early IndoTyrrhenian in connection with the
>origin of e/o ablaut in IE conjugation, if I had my way).
>
>When the non-initial vowels start affecting the initial vowel,
>we have "vowel harmony", _period_. Even if the final vowel is
>lost, the fact is that initial vowel has been harmonized with the
>others.
>
>Danny:
> >Vowel harmony, on the other hand, affects the non-initial and suffixal
> >vowels mostly. Uralic languages classify front, back and neutral vowels.
> >In Finnish, if the stem has a front vowel and the suffix has a back
>vowel,
> >the back vowel is fronted: i-a > i-�, i-o > i-�, i-u > i-�. Turkic has
> >backing of the vowel /i/ with back vowels, so where e-i remains e-i, a-i
> >becomes
> >a-I (dotless i). There are some more rules related to rounding of
>vowels,
> >but I forgot what they are exactly.
>
>Right, but this gets a little complex and confusing. In Altaic,
>it appears to me as though there was not only what we might call
>"regressive fronting assimilation" (*i-u > *i"-u) but also a
>later process of "progressive rounding assimilation"
>(*i"-u > *i"-i").
>
>In Proto-Uralic, the only vowel harmony I see having happened
>is regressive fronting assimilation where the frontness or backness
>of the secondary vowels is carried back onto the initial vowel
>(basically, anticipatory assimilation). However, later languages
>like Finnic languages have probably built onto this vowel harmony,
>adding new dynamics to it such as alternating suffixes (-ta/-ta")
>that match the front-back quality of the roots' vowels. This
>is a progressive and not a regressive vowel harmony.
>
>(And thinking on the origins of e/o ablaut in IndoTyrrhenian lead
>me to the understanding that IT also used regressive assimilation
>via influence with Proto-AltaicGilyak, way back when.)
>


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