From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
Message: 47776
Date: 2007-03-10
>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...>I think _you_ didn't read or understand the article you
>wrote:
>> Miguel is right, though, in saying that compensation occurs at the
>> coda - the triggering changes occur after the vowel that gets
>lengthened.
>>
>
>I think Richard that you didn't read & understand completely my
>posted pdf...
>
>Some interesting evidence that has been used in support of the moraicSo what the author says is exactly what I said:
>view of syllables comes from the phenomenon known as compensatory
>lengthening. Besides providing a very simple view of the common syllable
>weight distinction between light and heavy, moraic representations
>afford an interesting account of a long noted asymmetry. It has long
>been known that the loss of certain consonants (normally through
>historical sound change) has led to the lengthening of vowels, while
>the loss of others has not. In general, the following asymmetry has
>been noted: if the consonant that is lost follows right after a vowel,
>the vowel often lengthens, but if the consonant precedes the vowel,
>the vowel never lengthens. A classic case is Latin, in which [s] was
>deleted historically under some circumstances whose details are not
>crucial here. What is crucial is that the vowel next to [s] only
>lengthened if the [s] was deleted after the vowel. In the forms in
>(b), the [s] deletes without affecting the vowel (or the nasal
>consonant).
>
>LATIN
>a.
>*kasnus> ka:nus 'grey'
>*kosmis> ko:mis 'courteous'
>*fideslia > fide:lia 'pot'
>
>b.
>*smereo:> mereo: 'deserve'
>*snurus> nurus 'daughter-in-law'
>
>There’s a ready explanation of this available in moraic theory. When the
>[s] follows a vowel in the forms in (a), it’s a coda consonant.
>When it deletes, it vacates a mora that the vowel can spread into,
>thus resulting in a lengthened (read bimoraic) vowel. When the [s] is an
>onset, however, it is deleted without freeing a mora, since onsets don’t
>have moras.
>Here’s a schematic picture of why compensatory lengthening only happens
>when codas delete, pictured in (a), vs. when onsets delete, pictured in (b).
>[picture]
>In class, we also looked at a couple of famous examples from Old Icelandic,The reason this is tricky is that in Ancient Greek (or
>and Ancient Greek in which compensatory lengthening happens when the
>deletion of a segment happens to the left of the lengthened vowel.
>OLD ICELANDIC (North Germanic)
>*liugan > lju:ga 'lie'
>*keosan> kjo:sa 'choose'
>
>(5)
>ANCIENT GREEK
>
>a.
>_Apparent_ compensatory lengthening after an onset is deleted
>*odwos > o:dos 'house' (East Ionic)
>*wiswos > (w)i:sos 'alike' (Asiatic Ionic)
>
>b.
>But...no lengthening in these clear cases of onset deletion
>*dweyos > deos 'fear' (all dialects) *klewos > kleos 'renown'
>*woikos > oikos 'house'
>
>In fact, both of these cases can be shown to arise from freeing up a mora.
>In Old Icelandic, the deleted segment is one of two vowels in a diphthong.
>So, even though it is to the left of the lengthened vowel, its loss frees
>a mora for the next vowel to spread into. We simply need to spread towards
>the beginning of the word. In Ancient Greek, things are trickier.