Re: my grammar

Just out of interest, can I ask what languages you've learned? Any field
linguistics? Any specific areas of linguistics you specialize in? I take
it from your sig that you're a 100% paid up linguist instead of a hobby
linguist like most of us. :) *hums* I'd love to try naturalizing in a
foreign language for a while... learning from books just doesn't give
you as much of a feel from the language it seems. :(

>
>You know, although this is unusual, I think one could rather
>straightforwardly account for such a pattern by a few simple
>diachronic sound changes.  The voicing of the accusative could
>result from some prefixed vowel (perhaps schwa) which later gets
>deleted.  Likewise, the vowel quality in the plurals could be
>accounted for by some sort of nasal suffix, perhaps /n/, which
>also gets deleted.  This would require one more change, however,
>to collapse all nasalized high or mid vowels together with their
>nonnasalized counterparts.
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>==========================================================================
>Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
>Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
>University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
>1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
>Chicago, IL 60637
>
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