--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:
>
> Richard:
> > there is the notorious 3 consonant cluster in the
> > presumably obsolescent verb /tilgref/ 'to telegraph' -
> > but reportedly not in the process of verb conjugation
>
> Me:
> > Yes, but this is a foreign word obviously. It may need
> > time yet to nativize into normal grammatical processes
> > like English "strive" did.
> With "tilgref", we know the word is foreign. It doesn't
> undergo native processes according to Richard yet but
> this is expected for foreign words that haven't acquired
> analogical changes yet. With "strive", the word was
> succesfully nativized into English grammar -- hence
> "strove".
The verb /tilgref/ was coined in Modern Hebrew! It derives from the
noun /"telegraf/, which to me seems to have a most peculiar stress
for Hebrew. You could probably counter-argue that the coiner was not
truly a native speaker. My key point was that, so far as I am
aware, -CCC- > -CCeC- is *not* a historical process in Hebrew. If
simplified, an inflectional rule would progress -CCVC + V > -CCCV,
but historically the process is -CCVCV > -CC&CV > -CCeCV. I don't
believe -CCC- ever occurred in 'native' words!
Be wary of the statements on Modern Hebrew. I saw a comment that the
word ending -CC was not permitted. Well, it is. It occurs with the
2nd person singular feminine of the perfective (now past) tense
unless the final consonant is guttural or quiesces, there are a few
uninflected words in -CC in the OT (e.g. _ne:rd_ 'nard'), and in the
OT it also occurs in the apocopated waw consecutive,
e.g. /wayyaSt/ 'and he drank'.
I may have misunderstood you, but do you really want to claim that
Modern Hebrew is phonologically similar to eLIE? Native words have
the syllable structure you reject as too complex to accept without
proof, i.e. CCVC is allowed in initial syllables but (hardly)
elsewhere. I would not be surprised if the pattern were the same in
the dialects of Arabic that permit initial clusters. Maltese would
might be a good place to start looking for patterns, as written
materials shows the vowels. I'm not suggesting anything beyond
typological parallels - Arabic simply provides a good example of a
CVC language that developed clusters. (Proto-Slavonic syllabic
structure was at least as complicated as CCVR.)
Perhaps I'm missing the point, but surely you must been aware of
anaptyxis before you detected it in PIE? Good examples are _'Enery_
for _Henry_ (are Canadians aware of 'Our 'Enery' = Henry Cooper, a
British Empire heavywieght boxing champion about thirty years ago)
and English _every_. Surely you met the term 'svarabhakti' long ago!
Richard.