Re: Lislakh

At 9:48:11 PM on Friday, December 3, 2010,
johnvertical@... wrote:

> In English, for example, you normally only find final
> unstress'd syllables ending in consonants or -i ("lucky",
> "doggie"), or -o ("hobo", "window"). However, that doesn't
> stop words like "lava", "voodoo", "cafe" existing, and
> having existed for centuries.

<Hobo>, <window>, <voodoo>, and <cafe> do not end in
unstressed syllables. In the first three the final syllable
has secondary stress; in the last it has primary stress for
me and many others and secondary stress for some. <Lava>
does end in an unstressed syllable, but final unstressed /ǝ/
is perfectly acceptable. Indeed, when the final syllable of
<window> loses secondary stress, as it does for some
speakers at least in informal speech, it's generally reduced
to /-dǝ/.

>> for example in Semitic every speaker who knows the
>> meaning of a root automatically will know the meaning of
>> its derivatives(example from the root *ktb, the
>> derivative kVtVb(V stands for vowel) is always connected
>> with the active form and nkVtVb with the passive form and
>> so on... ie with clear and well defined paterns a system
>> that is lacking in the indo-european daughter languages
>> in respect with the constructed proto indo-european
>> roots)

> This kind of long-lasting transparency is a peculiarity
> of Semitic, not an universal property of language
> families. And I suspect even that transparency starts
> dimming up once we get into Semitic roots whose
> consonantal skeleton has undergone some actual changes.

Moreover, there are still traces of the stage before the
skeleton-and-template system evolved.

Brian