Re: [tied] *pYerkW+

On 2007-05-22 22:19, Sean Whalen wrote:

> What other PIE words have a morpheme +mi+s?

Ved. bHú:mi- 'earth, ground, country', ja:mí- 'related like a sibling',
u:rmi- 'wave', PIE *kWr.'mi- ~ *w(e)rmi- 'worm', Av. da:mi- etc.

> I don't
> know of anything else exactly like tu > pi. However,
> since tw > p does exist I think it's possible.

So why doesn't it seem to happen? tw > p (more commonly dw > b)
represents assimilation with coalescence, not partial metathesis of the
type you have proposed.

> That
> is, w = +round but u = i+round.

Not quite. In terms of distictive features, /i/ is [+front, +high], /u/
is [-front, +high, +round]. Take away [+round], and you still have to
add [+front] to get /i/.

> When the feature
> +round moves to t (only specified by C) C+round > p.
> If the round feature moves from u it leaves i; from w
> it leaves nothing.

Why not *j, to use the same logic? Sorry if what I'm saying sounds like
nitpicking, but metathesis normally has some kind of motivation: it may
increase the perceptual saliency of the output, repair a phonotactically
flawed structure, result from a simple slip of the tongue, etc. It
doesn't happen just because an abstract feature wants to move. /nu/ and
/mi/ are neither confusible nor even impressionistically similar. I find
it hard to imagine a natural mechanism transforming the one into the other.

Piotr