Re: [tied] Compensatory lengthening

On 2006-09-14 18:49, tgpedersen wrote:

>> 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).
>
> Or maybe it was an athematic ablative.

I'm afraid I don't follow. Why should the Skt. nominative be an
ablative, of all things?

>> The length isn't compensatory, or to be more
>> precise it doesn't compensate for a lost segment.
>
> As I said, and I don't like it.
>
>
>> The nom.sg. *-s (but not just any *-s!)
>
> And I don't like that either.

Sorry, but it happens to be that way.

>> lengthens vowels in the final syllables of
>> 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).
>
> How about instead, as I proposed, an exceptionless phonetic rule and
> sporadic restauration of stem auslaut and/or nom. -s?

It isn't sporadic. The *-s appears in well-defined phonetic
environments. The distribution makes sense if we assume conditioned
loss, but hardly so if we assume wholesale loss with selective
restoration. Why should *-s have been analogically restored after *-w
but not after *-j, for example? Why wasn't it restored after nasals?
There was no phonotactic prohibition against *-Vns# or *-Vis# in PIE.
And most importantly -- if *-s was lost without exception, what's its
restoration supposed to have been analogical to?

>> The o-colour of the
>> thematic vowel in the nom.sg. *-o-s is also ascribed to the original
>> voicing of *-z.
>
> As I recounted some massages back, and proposed that nom. was not
> *-oz, but *-oNs.

I don't understand your proposal, or the motivation behind it.

> Yes, all that is the standard theory. What do you think of my
> proposal?

The idea that, e.g. *wo:kWs comes from *wo: with the *kW and the *s
restored by analogy? I think I like it less than the standard account.

Piotr