Re: Syncope

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

>
> At last! Proof of my sanity, if I ever should need it :)
> Everything I'm proposing for Pre-IE seems to exist
> elsewhere in eery detail.
>
> For example, a precedent for a-Epenthesis exists apparently
> in Modern Hebrew where an "e-epenthesis" occurs to
> repair a potentially yucky series of THREE CONSONANT
> PHONEMES (!!!) in some derivations.
>
> http://www.phil-fak.uni-

duesseldorf.de/~grafd/papers/manchester_handout_consonat_clusters.pdf

>
> It's surprising how much eLIE and Modern Hebrew share similar
> features as mentioned in that pdf actually! From a web
> search, it would seem that Kissiberth dealt with this same
> three-consonant-in-a-row yuckiness and a similar syncope
> in Tonkawa in a paper published just after Woodstock.

Historically, it's not such a good example. The schwa of Classical
Hebrew is silent (whence almost all the words beginning with two
consonants) or /e/ in Modern Hebrew; I'm told that /a/ has now taken
on the role of schwa. The example he gives is the 3pl. future
(imperfective qal in Classical Hebrew), where we see Classical
Hebrew /yiGm&"ru:/ > /yigme"ru/, not */yigm"ru/ which one might
expect from the develoment of the Classical Hebrew 3pl
perfective /ga:m&"ru:/ to Modern Hebrew past /gamru/. It would be
interesting to know whether the vowel of the 3pl future is always
preserved, or whether it depends on the nature of the 3 consonants.
3 consonant clusters are allowed - there is the notorious 3
consonant cluster in the presumably obsolescent verb /tilgref/ 'to
telegraph' - but reportedly not in the process of verb conjugation
http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/lingui/downloads/batel/reduplication.
rtf Para. 11 (e)(i).

Richard.