Re: PIE *a -- a preliminary checklist

From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
Message: 53462
Date: 2008-02-17

On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 15:52:08 -0800 (PST), Rick McCallister
<gabaroo6958@...> wrote:

>Thanx for explaining. No such law or traces in Gmc?

Dybo did an article on vowel shortenings in Italo-Celtic and
Germanic, which look like a kind of mirror-image of Hirt's
law (where Balto-Slavic retracted the stress from e.g.
*suh1nús to *súh1nus, Germanic shortened the vowel in
*sunuz). The problem is that there are a number of
exceptions in Italo-Celtic with unexpected long vowel
(fu:mus is the one that comes to mind). In Germanic, the
rule only works if there is resonant between the laryngeal
and the stressed vowel.

Dybo's conjecture is well worth a re-evaluation. Does
anyone have the original article at hand?

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