Re: natlang stuff: vowelless words

FFlores wrote:

>Well, the articles in Romance languages (Italian and French
>more than Spanish) work more or less the same, but the proper
>forms are the ones with a vowel (_le, la_) and the others are
>formed by elision (_l'_). The difference with the Russian
>prepositions in this case is none, synchronically speaking,
>but it may be not so diachronically. Are _v, k, s_ contracted
>forms of _vo, ko, so_, OR is the "o" in _vo, ko, so_ epenthetic?
I took two years of French in high school, and I forgot all about
_l'_, _d'_, _c'_, etc. before vowels.  Duh.

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.  So
they're probably the proper forms of the words, and the _vo, ko, so_
forms have an epenthetic _o_, since epenthetic _o_ (or _e_ after
_z^_, _c_, _c^_, _s^_, and _s^c^_) appears a lot.  (Example: Russian
_zoloto_ "gold" vs. Polish _zl~oto_; other similar words in the
former language are _moloko_ "milk", _gorod_ "city"...)

Danny

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