Re: natlang stuff: vowelless words

On Tue, 20 Apr 1999, Danny Wier wrote:

> I think -- I *repeat* I think -- that _v, k, s_ all had a hard sign
> after them in Old Church Slavonic, which came ultimately from a short
> _u_ in PIE.  But I don't know OCS too well; I'm only guessing.
You guess right. I was taught (by Jadranka Gvozdanovi'c, who
admittedly said and wrote quite a few controversial things when whe
was teaching in Amsterdam) to pronounce the hard sign in OCS as a
shwa if a consonant follows (i.e. never to assimilate it). This
causes syllables that consist of a consonant and an *optional* shwa,
of course.

   Irina


            Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastinay.
                     irina@rempt.xs4all.nl (myself)
     http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/frontpage.html (English)
    http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/backpage.html (Nederlands)