From: tgpedersen
Message: 46073
Date: 2006-09-14
>Or maybe it was an athematic ablative.
> On 2006-09-14 10:14, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > I don't understand the compensatory lengthening Latin pe:s,
> > Greek pous. I seems to me they are compensated for something
> > they didn't quite lose. There is not much phonological sense
> > in a rule that removes part of the consonants in auslaut. All
> > or nothing I say. It must have been nominative pe:, in composites
> > -i-po:, and the nominative -s analogically restored later.
>
> The actual form of the nom.sg. was *po:ds, phonetically *[po:ts],
> and simplifications of the final cluster are branch-specific
> (cf. Skt. pa:t with regular t < *ts).
>The length isn't compensatory, or to be moreAs I said, and I don't like it.
> precise it doesn't compensate for a lost segment.
>The nom.sg. *-s (but not just any *-s!)And I don't like that either.
>lengthens vowels in the final syllables ofHow about instead, as I proposed, an exceptionless phonetic rule and
> consonantal stems irrespective of whether it stays or goes (as in
> *p&2té:r, etc.). It was lost after *r, *n, *s and *j (probably also
> after *m and *l), but not e.g. in *wo:kW-s, *k^lo:p-s, *népo:t-s or
> *dié:u-s, where we find length nevertheless. Jens's hypothesis is that
> the nom.sg. ending was originally voiced *-z rather than *-s, and that
> the difference has something to do with the phonetic lengthening
> (phonemicised upon the merger of *-z with *-s).
>The o-colour of theAs I recounted some massages back, and proposed that nom. was not
> thematic vowel in the nom.sg. *-o-s is also ascribed to the original
> voicing of *-z.