Re: [tied] Re: Syncope

On Thu, 25 Mar 2004, Richard Wordingham wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer@...>
> wrote:
>
> > I don't see how a suffix can begin ablauting after ablaut is over
> and
> > there were no examples of the suffix that were ever hit by the
> ablaut.
> > Where would it get its allomorphs from? Would people begin spicing
> up
> > *-men- with a variant *-mn.- just because the roots had full-grade
> and
> > zero-grade alternants? That's one of the things I believe we can
> quietly
> > forget.
>
> What if it were felt as a two-root compound?  Ablaut spreads to new
> words, e.g. the strong preterite _arrove_ of the French loanword
> _arrive_ in English or the completely strong conjugation of English
> _strive_ from Old French _estriver_.  

Well, why assume that? Why not keep it as close to the facts we can
observe as possible? And won't it only make it worse? It is as if you
introduce an ablaut pattern of an English strong verb into a numeral. Will
you have "five" forming "fove", "fiven", and what will you use the new
forms for?

Jens