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

> 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