--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "C. Darwin Goranson"
<cdog_squirrel@...> wrote:
> On the topic of the "infixed sonant" that you mention elsewhere on a
> similar topic (http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?
> A2=ind0004&L=indo-european&D=0&P=2621): correct me if I'm wrong, but
> are you saying it would originally have been just an epenthetic
schwa
> that took the place of the laryngeal, or that the laryngeal became
> voiced, before being reanalyzed as an ablauting vowel?
No, I don't say any of that. We are talking about the -o- of the
causative and other formations with the same vocalism and ablaut
properties, right? There is no way this -o- could be of epenthetic
origin; it is definitely opposed to zero. When you bring laryngeals
into it, you are probably thinking of the laryngeal-deleting effect of
this particular o-vocalism. When a laryngeal is lost by this event, it
is replaced by zero, not by anything that could be termed an
epenthetic schwa. And it cannot well be the laryngeal that is
transformed into the -o- since it also appears with roots that have no
laryngeals.
What I am saying is that there once was a prefixed consonant of
unknown identity (most probably something like a uvular R). Before the
rise of zero-grade, the prefix was metathesized so that it came to
appear last in the initial consonantism. Then, when unaccented vowels
were lost, the infix consonant came to stand in the middle of a heap
of consonants, so that, when it was later vocalized and fell in with
the already-existing phoneme /o/, the net result was that there was
now an /o/ in the place where the root vowel had once stood. The
unsophisticated interpretation of this is that the form has "o-grade"
of the root vowel. In fact, however, the ablaut grade is zero, and
the -o- is a vocalized consonant.
Jens