Re: S mobile (Was : PS Emphatics)

You left out my favorite somewheres --usually
pronounced /s@...@Rz/ by the hill folk

--- Richard Wordingham <richard@...>
wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fournet.arnaud"
> <fournet.arnaud@...>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > What is "s mobile" ?
> >
> > A standard feature of orthodox PIE. Some roots
> appear both
> > with and without initial *s, e.g., *(s)teg- 'to
> cover' (Gk.
> > <stégo:>, Skt. <sthagati> 'to cover, conceal',
> Lat. <tego:>,
> > OIr <tech> 'house', ON <þekja> 'to thatch', etc.).
> >
> > Brian
> > =========
> > Tsalam? t?ob
> >
> > How do you explain
> > that the phoneme with no grammatical status
> > can be there or not be there ?
> >
> > Which languages in the real world do that ?
>
> The English prepositions _among(st)_, _amid(st)_ and
> _toward(s)_
> immediately come to mind. Curiously isolated forms
> include
> _thereabouts_ and _whereabouts_. The -s(t) comes
> from an old use of
> the genitive.
>
> There's a similar set of (a)round and, with curious
> gramatical
> differences, (a)live and (a)like. However, you may
> argue that here we
> simply see inconsistent phonetic loss.
>
> Richard.
>
>
>
>

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