Re: full (was: swallow vs. nightingale)

----- Original Message -----

From: Richard Wordingham

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 5:09 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: full (was: swallow vs. nightingale)

> Your idea that prefixes can be added to biliterals, which hardly
exist in Arabic, such as H-, r-, ?a to f-l. which preserves its
meaning of 'fill/full' is totally contrary to established theory.

You surprise me. I can find an account (e.g.
http://starling. rinet.ru/ Texts/semroot. pdf ) which states that 'w, y,
?' (and, with hesitations, much less common t, ʕ and h)' can, as a
historical rather than synchronic process, be added to a biliteral
root in any of the three postions, apparently without changing the
meaning. In the same paper, Miltarev goes on to list the following as
'fossilised formants', i.e. possibly having meaning: m, n, t, r, l, ?,
h, b and k. These he says are basically restricted to initial and
final position.

Richard.

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Richard:

Again, thanks for making me aware of the linked article by Militarev.

Moscati, on whom I have been relying, makes no mention of the processes described above.

Militarev's essay has convinced me of the basic soundness of his proposition; and I must say, I regret being convinced.

It makes PAA word formation chaotic in a way I have seen in no other major language family. Perhaps you will have to correct my ignorance again?

What is even more amazing to me is that these formants are often added to triliterals (including geminates) without necessarily replacing one of the root consonants.

I am not so rigid as to not believe in the exception that makes the rule but here the exception seems to be the rule.

If Fournet had furnished such a link, much ink could have not been spilled.

 

Patrick

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