Re: [tied] Animate Dual in -h3 (was: IE Roots)

From: tgpedersen
Message: 25368
Date: 2003-08-27

> I'm sorry to hear you think that is "sheer nonsense" (see
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/21817> for more
details).
>
> Why would asyllabic endings like *-s, *-t become voiced *-z, *-d
(at least
> when not sentence final)? I did not address that issue in message
21817,
> but it's not terribly difficult to come up with a possible
explanation.
> The phenomenon occurs at a morpheme boundary (e.g. *pod-z, *to-d).
If
> morpheme boundaries were previously word-boundaries (that's teh
principle
> of agglutination), then perhaps there was some overt prosodical
marking of
> the word/morpheme boundary, such as a rise in pitch, or a glottal
stød.
> Phonetically [pá:d?s], [ta:?t]. With syllabic endings (e.g. Gen.
> *[pa:d?ás] or perhaps, depending on the exact time-frame, an earlier
> *[pa:dá?si]), the feature simply vanished without a
trace, "absorbed by the
> vowel". In the vowelless ("strong") endings, however, the result
was
> voicing of the consonant: [pá:d?s] > [pod-z] > [po:dz], [ta:?t] >
[to-d].
>

Perhaps this might provide a way to fix the Verner conundrum of s > z
before Grimm, T > D, x > G, f > v after: suppose PIE /s/ was already
voiced in this position? Then Verner should just be reformulated as a
rule for retaining, not creating, voicedness.

Torsten