On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 09:22:56 +0100, P&G <
petegray@...> wrote:
>Quantative ablaut is hard to establish. It seems to have two main sources:
> (a) lengthening in the nominative of animate nouns ending in -r, -n, etc
This is Szemerényi's formulation (lengthening due to compensatory
lengthening), but in fact the ending consonant does not matter for the
_lengthening_ (it matters only for the dropping of -s). We have *nepo:ts,
*meh1no:ts etc. in the nom. sg. Where there were two consonants before the
-s, the lengthening does not appear, e.g. *nokWts, probably due to some
kind of pre-PIE Osthoff-shortening.
This "Szemerényi lengthening" must be dated _before_ zero-grade (e.g. the
genitive sg. in *-s, from pre-zero-grade **-Vs, does not cause
lengthening).
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...