From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 25013
Date: 2003-08-08
>08-08-03 14:57, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:Could be- (bi-) be another example? It's usually derived from *bhi-, but
>
>
>>>Leaving this marginal problem apart, the question remains why we don't
>>>get *ber-/*bra-/*bur- (no matter if the initial was phonetically *[b-]
>>>or *[B-]) rather than *fer-/*fra-/*fur- in unstressed prefixes.
>>
>> Yes. Is *ga- the only preverb affected by Verner's law?
>
>I think so. Interestingly, *ga- is also exceptional in that it has no
>free-standing counterpart and that it's _always_ unstressed, not only in
>verbs but also in nouns and adjectives. Thus, while hypothetical *bur-'
>would have alternated with *'fur- and with the free adprep that yields
>Eng. <for>, *ga- did not alternate with anything. Isolated archaic forms
>like *xanso: < *xansso: < *kom-dH(h1)t-ah2 were synchronically obscure
>and didn't count morphophonologically. What I'm suggesting is of course
>that the effect of Verner's Law was _eliminated_ very soon in the case
>of the alternating suffix but was retained in *ga- because all evidence
>of the original form had been lost.