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

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
> > On Tue, 26 Aug 2003 15:37:26 +0000, elmeras2000 <jer@...> wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
> Do you need word boundaries? I can't help think there was

something

> similar with the plural -s in English. There are several examples
> of fossil /s/ - 'bodice' as opposed to 'bodies', 'pence' as opposed
> to 'pennies', 'dice' as opposed to 'dies'. Similarly, the Scottish
> pronunciations of 'teas' and 'tease' are reported to be different.
>

Some Germanic dialects (German, Dutch, Kent, Somerset) have initial z-
, v- etc, some (North Germanic, Friesian (and Noordhollands under the
influence of an old Friesian substrate?) and the rest of English have
s-, f- etc. If we explain the difference by positing a word-boundary
some type of H, English had dialects with and without. Which might
explain Richard's observations.

BTW Caesar notes that the Germani had the 'murmur fractum' as an
ideal. Which we might interpret to mean that some used it and some
didn't. We might even tentatively identify it with that internal
reorganisation of the Elbe-Germani Rischl speaks, who later expanded
to the Rhine-Weser Germani (and without mentioning further names).
Note that the z-, v- dialects of English are Saxon, thus coming from
south of the origin of the other dialects.

Torsten