[tied] Re: IE thematic presents and the origin of their thematic vo

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

> > Is such "iconic lengthening" realistic, from a phonological
> > standpoint?
>
> What _phonological_ difficulty could there be here?

Where would the lengthening come from? Purely emphatic usage? Such a
thing can happen in English, e.g. "I *talked* to him", where
emphasized "talked" would show an "iconically lengthened" vowel, would
mean "I really talked to him" or "I talked to him a lot". So I suppose
that could lead to an intensive or iterative meaning.

> But one could ask, with reason, if this kind of phonological
> iconicity is ever found in the real world. Well, there are plenty of
> lengthened-grade iterative verbs in Balto-Slavic, so I could give
> numerous examples from my own language, such as <zapraszac'> 'invite
> continually' vs. <zaprosic'> 'invite (once)' and <prosic'> 'ask,
> invite' (< PIE *prok^-éje-; Slavic *a reflects the lengthened
> counterpart of *o). Reduplication is very often transparently iconic
> (cf. Tok Pisin tok 'talk' vs. toktok [iterative or intensive]).

I know that is only one example, but there are a couple things I find
puzzling: one is the use of the infinitive ending -ac' in <zapraszac'>
vs. -ic' in <(za)prosic'>. Another is /S/ in the former vs. /s/ in the
latter. Can you explain this?

- Rob