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Re: Thalassan Possessive Suffixes

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Tuesday, February 14, 2006, 18:18
Quoting Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>:

> Hi! > > Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> writes: > >... > > Anyway, I like the suffixes. I do wonder, tho, whether the sound-changes in > the > > pl forms are regular - the loss of the second-to-last vowel seems a tad > odd. > > Hmm, not necessarily, I think. It might be perfectly feasible given > the right stress patterns (or some other good explanation). Note that > Latin has interesting syncope, too due to accent shifts, too: > > gaudere < *ga-widere > gavisus < *ga-wisus > > Prote-Norse also drops the penultimate when the ultimate cannot be > dropped for some reason. E.g. singular of 'cauldron' is 'ketill', > but plural is 'katlar'. This is regular: > > *katilaR > *katilR > *ketilR > ketill > *katilo:R > *katlaR > katlar > > Syncope drops ultimate vowel if short and before a given set of > consonants, of which R happens to be one, and otherwise shortens (and > recolours) the last vowel and drops penultimate. (Also note the > beautiful i-umlaut that only occurs in one of the forms.) > > So I'd say with the right explanation, the Thalassan drop of vowel is > perfectly feasible. > > (Or did you find the vowel drop odd for some completely different > reason that I fail to see?)
I said it seemed odd, not infeasible or unnatural - that's why I asked if it was a regular development in the language. One could certainly think up scenarios in which such an outcome would be regular - I was wondering if he'd done so, or if was an irregular reduction of these particular clitics. Andreas