Re: [tied] Re: Some accentological thoughts...

On Sat, 10 Mar 2007 09:22:04 -0000, "tgpedersen"
<tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
>For some reason, according to official doctrine, once Germanic lost
>final *-a in the Nsg,f it immediately added *-on which then became
>*-a.

Nsg. *-a: wasn't lost. It appears as -a in Gothic, -u in OE
(after light roots). The reason *-on is reconstructed for a
word like *gWeno:n is beacuse it *is* an n-stem, and has
different endings in the Nsg. as well as in the oblique
(Goth. qino:, qino:ns, not *qina, *qino:s; OE cwene, cwenan,
not *cwenu, *cwene).

>Why this fondness for *-a in the Nsg,f? Wouldn't it be more
>understandable if the suffix had been stressed *-á and never been lost
>in the first place (which then would raise the question of whether it
>was stressed in PIE)?

Since Germanic always retracted the stress to the first
syllable, what possible difference could the position of the
stress have made?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
miguelc@...