Schwebeablaut (was Re: tolkien?)

Hallo!

On Sat, 13 Dec 2003 20:05:23 -0500,
Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> wrote:

> On Sat, 13 Dec 2003 13:01:47 -0800, Elliott Lash <erelion12@...>
> wrote:
>
> > Something like 'sound association' happens in
> > Silindion, my main project. There are groups of roots
> > which have similar meanings and sound.
>
> It is *fairly* obvious (to me) that this is the case for a number of PIE
> roots, too. The most well-known example is uerg^/ureg, but possibly also
> perk^/prek^ and several others. I used to have a file of all the ones I'd
> identified, but it is escaping me at the moment. They're almost always of
> the form CeRC/CReC, sometimes CeHC/CHeC.
These are indeed quite common in PIE, common enough to have a terminus
technicus for this phenomenon: it is called Schwebeablaut.
The origin might have been a difference in accent position:

*CáRaC > *CeRC
*CaRáC > *CReC

I am planning to use Schwebeablaut in my IE-related conlang family
"Hesperic", though I don't know yet what exactly to do with it.

> What bugs the heck out of me is that although many of these root-pairs are
> obviously semantically connected, the exact meaning of the Re/eR
> alternation seems to be lexical rather than predictable.
Yes.

Greetings,

Jörg.

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