Re: Nominative: A hybrid view

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer@...>
wrote:

>
> On Sat, 31 May 2003, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> >
> > > I have been taken to task for not producing exact parallels for

the

> > > voice-governed e/o alternation, and funnily not for making it

voice-

> > > governed, but for connecting that fact in turn with the tone.

Now,

> > I
> > > actually don't know of *any* other cases of a voice-governed
> > > alternation e/o, so the "low incidence" of the association with

the

> > > tone is not of much relevance.
> >
> > I was wondering if Swedish 'dom' vs. Danish 'dem' "them" might be
> > relevant here (both alternating with schwa!), Swedish voiced stops
> > being more voiced than their Danish counterparts (which actually
> > aren't)?
>
> I'm afraid this is very far from meeting the requirements set to me

by my

> critics. They want (he wants) me to point to fifty other languages

with

> a history known over millennia as safely containing a comparable

change

> of /e/ to /o/ (vel sim.) in dependency of the voicing properties of

the

> following segment and independent of the accent (although the
> last-mentioned requirement is erroneously replaced by "when

unaccented

> only"). I am being rebuked for the "low incidence" of such examples;
> frankly, I don't think they have any incidence. Also I would have

trouble

> trusting anybody claiming anything on such a basis which is just

outside

> our reach.
>

Glen might want fifty examples (and once he gets them, he'll want
seventy); Popper needs only one example to falsify a claim that such
an alternation doesn't exist anywhere. Let's just restrict ourselves
to Swedish: older Swedish still has 'dem' (oblique; presumably
alternating with unstressed 'd&m'); modern Swedish has 'dom'
(nominative and oblique; presumably still alternating with
unstressed 'd&m'; my Sprachgefühl is shaky here). And the /d/,
although on the wrong side of the vowel, is voiced. If there's an
alternation e/o here, it's brought about indirectly. The novel /o/
seems to arise from the schwa, not the /e/.

Torsten