Re: [tied] Ablaut and accent

On Wed, 23 Apr 2003, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:

> On Wed, 23 Apr 2003 00:19:50 +0200 (CEST), Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
> <jer@...> wrote:
>
> >Outside of the main debate: Armenian has final stress, but still accepts
> >words like tasn, eLungn, ezr, astL. Surely such a language should not be
> >alarming to Indo-Europeanists. It does not follow from that, however, that
> >the possibility was utilized exactly in the case under discussion.
>
> No, but it follows from the fact that the accusative singular is a
> strong case. If the desinence had been syllabic, it would have
> attracted the accent. It didn't, so *-m was not syllabic.

I'd say that's a fair way of presenting it. Another could be to say there
are degrees in this: Full vowels attract the accent, syllabic consonants
do not. Do we agree that strong paradigm forms have flexives without
original vowels, while those of weak paradigm forms do have vowels in
them? I believe that is exactly correct.

Jens