Re: Conlang puzzles (Was: Re: New monster word in Maggel ;))))

Quoting Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>:

> En réponse à "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...>:
>
> > > [m@'gE:l] It features again the "lengthening g" :)) . And |a| is
> > reduced to
> > > [@] like in many unstressed cases.
> >
> > Is the "lengthening g" a purely orthographic convention?
>
> Synchronically yes. It's one of the ways to lengthen vowels (another is
> adding a |o| *after* the vowel), and the only way lengthened diphtongues
> are marked. Diachronically things may have been different in the past,
> although I frankly don't know what diachronic process could have led
> to such a strange convention [...]
I asked, because I too couldn't imagine any normal diachronic
process to that would make lengthen the *following* vowel.  In
Greek, for example, historical /w/ was lost, which meant for a
word like */odwos/, the second syllable was missing an onset.
In compensation, the /d/ shifted to become an onset, BUT since
codas were moraic in Greek, the mora of the originally coda /d/
reassociated to the preceding vowel, creating /o:dos/.  But that's
more or less the opposite of what I see happening in the word
<Maggel>.  Maybe it has something to do with the stress assignment?

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier
Dept. of Linguistics  "Nihil magis praestandum est quam ne pecorum ritu
University of Chicago sequamur antecedentium gregem, pergentes non qua
1010 E. 59th Street   eundum est, sed qua itur." -- Seneca
Chicago, IL 60637

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