From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 21679
Date: 2003-05-10
>To get over the stalemate in the quarrel over ablaut I shall have toAre you unsure about the length or about the u-ness?
>point out a number of things I do not find occasion to say if I only
>respond to the posts of others.
>
>It appears to be fundamental that the three main parts of the IE
>inflected word have their own limits of vocalism:
>
>Roots may have any vocalism, long or short; while by far the most common
>root vowel is /e/ or /e:/, also /a/, /a:/, /o/ and /o:/ appear to be
>represented. (I am not so sure about the long /u:/ of 'mouse' anymore.)
>Suffixes only have /e/ (and what comes from that source).Well, isn't that begging the question? What we observe is that
>Endings may have any vocalism, but only short: /e, o, a, i, u/.I'm trying to think of an ending with /a/... What are you referring
>Thus there was no accent shift in theI'm not sure if the ntr.du. is originally a strong ending. In
>strong cases in *-z, -Ø, *-m, MF.du. *-h3, nom.pl. *-zs, acc.pl. *-ms,
>ntr.du. *-yh1, or coll. *-h2, nor in the active sg. verbal endings *-m,
>*-s, *-t, while there was accent movement before all the other endings
>which formed syllables.
> A stem ending in the thematic vowel could be further extended byBut the o-stem endings select *o before a subsequently reduced vowel
>suffixes and so did not always occupy final position of the full stem.
>The thematic vowel rule also worked in the position before added
>suffixes, as opt. *bhér-o-yh1-t, but stative *séne-h1- 'be old'. Thus,
>these stem-final or suffix-final vowels must have retained their
>special feature down to a time following the main ablaut reduction by
>which /-eh1-/ was reduced to /-h1-/ because not accented and then
>selected /-e-/ as the form of the preceding thematic vowel.