Re: [tied] Germanic without the Schleifton

19-07-03 02:02, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:

> I don't think it really matters that much whether we reconstruct tonal or
> syllabic oppoitions (*ó: ~ *õ:, *-oí ~ *-oi~ or *-o: ~ *-oo, *oy ~ *oï).

It doesn't, but it's nice to keep hiatus as an alternative solution.
Stress and tonal accent are already a little overworked in Germanic (I
mean Verner's Law and the establishment of initial stress).

> Just to clarify one point: the "ablative" adverbs have Goth -o:, ON/OE -a,
> OS/OHG -o. Assuming hiatus rather than Schleifton in PGmc., the PGmc form
> must have been *-aa(d) [c.q. *-aa(t) if we had PIE *-o:d instead of *-o:t].
> Is it the final consonant that preserved length in Gothic -o: (not *-a),
> and is it the fact that the consonant wasn't *-z or *-s what prevented
> length to be maintained in OHG -o (not *-a:)?

This probably tells us something about the relative chronology of
consonant loss in unstressed finals: only *z, *s and *r made it into
Proto-NWGmc.

Piotr