Jens:
> Your Syncope *is* quantitative ablaut under a partly new name.
Since most of us can see why "Syncope" (the dropping of
unstressed vowels) and "quantitative ablaut" (the alternations
of *e with NULL and *e: with *e) are clearly two seperate
things, albeit _related_ but not identical, I'm not going to
waste much time on convincing you otherwise. The two words
cannot in any way be interchanged and if you do so, you'll
introduce more confusion into this topic. I make the
distinction, even if you don't.
> And the question was: When that process had later ceased to be a
> phonetic one, having instead become one of pure analogy, how could
> *later* formations that were only made after that time, as you say
> about suffixal derivatives, also be zero-graded?
The process of quantitative ablaut was more than analogy. It
had become a morphological rule governed by accent placement.
When Syncope occured, morphemes continued to alternate based
on the accent, now alternating with zeroed syllables instead
of just reduced syllables. Any subsequent derivations continued
to operate under quantitative ablaut as if they had predated
Syncope but some tell-tale signs of later rules can show
through.
So, I have no clue why you don't understand here. If, let's
say, *wertmn were created before Syncope, we'd still see
just before the event a reduction of the vowel in the suffix
when accent is not present, and a full vocalism when the
accent IS present (as in declensional paradigms for example).
When Syncope occured, unstressed vowels were dropped and
*-mn resulted. Now *-mn was the unstressed version of *-men-.
All other suffixes behaved similarly at this point.
This alternation as we all know followed very simple rules
and thus could be applied to later suffixes that POSTdated
Syncope very easily because this alternation became normal
and expected. Do I have to drum up a real-world example?
It should make immediate sense.
> What allomorphs can there have been to introduce by
> analogy?
Elementary: The allomorphs of morphemes that _did_ survive
Syncope would provide this analogy.
= gLeN