?VCC- (was: Syncope)

Jens:

> > Is it not a strange thing that this putative initial vowel is

never

> > accented?

gLeN:

> Not really, because MIE *esam "I am" shows that there
> are indeed initial vowels that are accented, with automatic
> preceding glottal stop of course.

Jens:

> > And is it not strange that the language has no roots of the
> > structure VC- if it has CVC- and CCVC- and VCCVC-.

gLeN:

> Hunh? Oh, I see what you mean. You probably would like a
> counterexample such as *en "in", though really because of
> the automatic glottal stop, we're speaking of CVC.
> Technically, a form like *asteh- would be
> CVC-CVC- if you count the glottal stop in [?as'tEh-].
> Lacking alternation as with *es-, there would be little
> need of the *?-. Of course, this is all assuming that it
> did being with a vowel. It could equally have been *sateh-,
> but since *a-Epenthesis doesn't apply here and since the
> causative can be explained as simple *o-grade, things
> are just fine.

Richard:
Wasn't the glottal stop (if that is what it was) real enough for us
to reconstruct PIE *h1su- 'good', *h1sont- 'being'? I'm open to
dissuasion in the latter case - the argument for *h1sont- rather
than *sont- seems to lie on patterns and on the Greek participle
eónt-. What demonstrates the *h1 in *h1senti 'they are'?

Incidentally, need the glottal stop have been automatic? If my
memory serves me right, Classical Arabic contrasts ?VCC- and VCC-.
Examples of the latter include _ibn_ 'son' and _ism_ 'name'. The
initial vowels in the VCC- words do seem to be examples
of 'automatic' vowels referred to below.

Jens:

> > What *is* your basis for the assumption of an initial
> > vowel before clusters?

gLeN:

> Occam's Razor. Since there is nothing conclusively
> pointing to consonant clustering in pre-Syncope MIE but
> everything supporting a simple CVC structure throughout,
> we needn't fret on this supposed clustering that we
> don't find. Or rather, unnecessary complexity bites!
>
> The rules on syllabics are automatic, so if one were
> to ask a speaker of this language about it, they wouldn't
> have a clue. It would be as second-nature to them as me
> tapping the "t"'s in "little".

Richard.