Re: [tied] Re: PIE Word Formation Q&A (1)

On 2006-04-04 17:05, Rob wrote:

> Yes, "phonological" is what I meant. :) By "oral stops", do you mean
> non-bilabial stops?

No, oral stops are just "normal" stops as opposed to nasals. In
phonetics, [m], [n], [N] etc. also count as stops, since their
articulation involves the complete closure of the oral tract

> On another note, I don't understand how such a
> rule could have worked when there are both e.g. *plhnós and *plhtós
> attested in descendant languages. Or do you think that the latter was
> not native to IE, but merely a subsequent innovation?

*pl.h1-nó- is widely attested and certainly PIE. *pleh1-to- (sic!) is of
limited distribution and looks like a late formation. The noun
*pleh1-tu- > *ple:tHu- 'crowd', which apparently underlies Gk. ple:tHu:s
and Lat. ple:b(e:)s has *-t-, but it's a separate formation, not a
verbal adjective.

> Unfortunately, it appears that the analysis of the origin of the *-nó-
> and *-tó- participles strains the bounds of internal reconstruction.

Why? It would strain the comparative method but seems to me to be
entirely legal as far as internal reconstruction is concerned.

> With English, I think the difference can be attributed to the
> placement of stress, i.e. prolónging vs. prolongátion.

No, cf. <longer> with /Ng/ vs. <longing> and <longs> with /N/. The
variation is sensitive to the nature of the morphological boundary, not
to stress and not merely to the phonetic environment.

> There are also
> some dialects of English (for example, Southern American English),
> that pronounce <ng> as [Ng] whenever it is not word-final (and, in
> some areas, even word-finally).

Also in the British West Midlands and Middle North, roughly from
Birmingham to southern Lancashire. But the whole point of my
illustration is that a language may well treat different boundaries in
different ways.

Piotr