On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 02:45:01 +0200 (MET DST), Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
<
jer@...> wrote:
>Thank you for the very full and clear quote. I still don't like it much,
>but that is beside the point.
I fell in love with van Coetsem's explanation the first time I read about
it in van Bree, long time ago. I find the first part of the theory (about
the split of *ei into *ii and *ee) so beautiful that I'm ready to swallow
whole the necessary but ugly second part of the theory (where most of the
evidence is washed away by Ausgleich). But de gustibus...
>It rather seems to me that tautosyllabic
>/-r/ has a finger in many examples; is there a regular development of
>*-air (+ vanishing material) to *-e:2r in some of the languages?
Another aspect van Coetsem apparently emphasized (I haven't read the
original papers) besides a-Umlaut was that of "Konsonantische Einfluss" (a
well-known example being Gothic /e/ (never /i/) before /r/, /x/ and /xw/).
I was just earlier wondering what a-Umlaut factor could in fact be present
in the word "here" taken as *k^eir[A]. The answer may well be: none, just
the lowering influence of the consonant /r/.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...