Re: TERMS: going dotty, twice over (was: TERMS: Umlaut-Ablaut)

At 2:59 pm -0800 16/11/99, Roland Hoensch wrote:
[....]
>
>Hungarians call it "kett=F5spont".  Same as a colon.  The word literally me=
ans
>'doubled-dot'.
Thanks.

Doubled-dot seems an eminently sensible name to me.  Why can't we be as
sensible as the Hungarians?
----------------------------------------------------------------
At 1:56 pm -0600 16/11/99, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
[...]
>
>What?  Turkish has vowel harmony -- which is, afterall, just the superset
>for umlaut :)
No, not at all.  It is the vowel in the _root_ word which conditions all
the vowels in the affixes (usually suffixes) in langs with vowel harmony.

Umlaut is almost the opposite; the vowel of a suffix has modified the root
vowel. The suffix then, of course, usually thinks it's done its job &
disappears.

>And German does use it for words which historically had no such
>vowel harmony at all, like <n=F6> and other such words which simply
>have front rounded vowels.
I don't know {n=F6},  and my dictionary doesn't list it.  Without saying
there are no such words, I personally no of none where the =F6 is not the
result of i-gradation (even if not i-umlaut in strict sense); e.g. in Greek
derived words like =D6konomie it represents Greek {oi}, Latinized as {oe}.

Ray.

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D