Re: Syncope

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:

> Luckily for me, everything about IE shows that there is
> indeed this simple, underlying CV(C) shape. We may find
> complex medial consonant clusters as in *we:gHst but of
> course, this is always the product of multiple affixes
> (*we:gH-s-t). Perhaps *kerd- comes the closest to counterproof
> but because of Syncope, it could derive from *kerAd-, not
> *kerd-, if all we know. An indivisible root with a pattern
> like CVCCCV(C)- for example could serve to break our simple
> CVC notion but I'm not aware of any such root in PIE. I'm
> not aware of any root that undermines this CVC solution.
>
> Now, to reconstruct any initial consonant clusters in this
> pre-Syncope stage as Jens would have us do forces us to
> either accept that (C)CCVC is allowed only for initial
> syllables, oddly without any proof of this shape in
> subsequent syllables, or it forces us to accept that the same
> shape was allowed for other syllables with some hypothetical
> phonetic erosion perhaps.

Is the restriction of CCVC to initial syllables so very odd? Thai
can be interpreted as having 'sesquisyllables' (i.e. CaCVC sequences
with the first vowel unstressed), but they only occur in the first
syllable of a morpheme (and almost all Thai morphemes are word-shaped
or merely a tone - I can think of only one exception.) The
sesquisyllables are very similar to the allowed CRVC sequences, but
sometimes contrast with them.

CVCCCVC words are not incompatible with a basic CV(C) structure -
examples are known where intervocalic -CCC- is allowed but neither
word initial CC- nor word final -CC.

I suppose any general discussion of these issues (i.e. outside IE)
should proceed on PhoNet.

Richard.