Jens:
> I haven't got it in my language, but I can easily do it. I can even do
> it in several ways, with the stops released or unreleased. You may want
> to look at a description of Georgian or Itelmin.
At any rate, I'm aware of these things AND Georgian AND Klallam for
god's sakes! Aaah, Klallam, the language of love (but only if you have
a fetish for being spit on, hehe). Anybody paying attention knows that
I know about these wonderfully kooky languages. However, I just don't see
it happening for EA or any prestage of EA (or any prestage of IE for
that matter), which was my original objection.
Either EA was a CV(C) type language like Uralic et alius, or it was a
language derived from such a pattern, perhaps something that may have gone
so far as to allow CVCC based on the evidence you cite. More than that
however, I have to doubt. I can't believe that EA had some vowelless
stage where **natRm was allowed. Afterall, we have to then ask ourselves
what on earth the rules are for syllable shape here. I'm suspicious of
any reconstructed language that doesn't take the pains to adhere to some
carefully designed restraint. It happens too often in Nostratic where
people cloak themselves under innocent ignorance and this becomes an
excuse to not be strict with their imagination.
> That makes excellent sense, and it is pretty much common opinion.
> However, I believe there are cases for which one needs the ridiculously
> vowelless prestage also.
I don't see it. If we can think of some subphonemic *& as a go-between in
cases where invalid syllabic shapes would arise, then we don't need that
stage at all. A form like *nat&R would just derive from an earlier form
with all phonemic vowels, nVtVR, while *natR&m would derive from nVtVRVm,
implying that syncope is what squeezed the second syllable out of
existence. The only matter is why some vowels become subphonemic and
others survive. I think the answer might be tied in with morphology
somehow.
> I have assumed the same for pre-IE,
"Assumed", yes. And all that I can say is that you ignore the fact that
almost all of these vowelless suffixes like *-s, *-i, *-t, etc are
derivable from demonstratives. That's an uncanny pattern which is doubly
supported by the parallelism of their morphological functions in both
free and bound form.
> Off topic for this list, there is no evidence for suffixal status of
> the last consonant of either *natR- or *aluR- in Eskimo.
Alright but then why are there so many q-terminating stems in Inuktitut
then. If it doesn't end in -q, it apparently ends in -k. We have /qayaq/,
/iseq/ and /umiaq/ for example. That must mean something. My spidey senses
tell me that ProtoSteppe was much like IE in the sense that it had an
overwhelming majority of roots that were CVC. I think just as IE
inheirited this pattern, so did EA and Uralic. So this all seems to
suggest that this *-R was a suffix for whatever purpose.
= gLeN