On Thu, 24 Apr 2003 08:57:01 +0100, P&G <
petegray@...>
wrote:
>>If the deseinence had been syllabic, it would have
>> attracted the accent. It didn't, so *-m was not syllabic.
>
>Pardon me, Miguel, but isn't this circular? Didn't you argue a posting or
>two ago that the suffix did not take the accent because it was not
>syllabic - yet here you say it is not syllabic because it didn't take the
>accent?
>
>Or perhaps I misunderstand...
No, it's circular. But in view of the rest of the evidence, that's
not so bad as it sounds. We have an accent rule which is clearly
motivated by syllabics: root nouns *pód-s, *ped-és, hysterodynamic
*peh2-tér-s, *peh2-ter-és; proterodynamic *h2ák^-mon-s, *h2ak-mén-os;
verbs *h1és-m/-s/-t, *h1es-mén/-té/-ént, etc. Now such rules may in
actuality distinguish between full vowels, which affect the position
of the accent, and syllabic sonorants, which do not. But only in
languages that *have* a category of syllabic sonorants.
Pre-zero-grade-PIE simply did not have such a category. All it had
was the single ending *-m (acc.sg., 1p.sg.), which we can see behaved
no differently from *-s, *-t or *-h2. The chances that it was a
syllabic /m./ at the time are therefore pretty slim. Now that I'm
able to say Piotr in one syllable, and czosnku in two (and that's a
dental /n/!), the supposed phonetic difficulties appear rather
trivial.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...