Re: Question: Verb Paradigms

Thomas Wier wrote:
>Quoting Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>:
>
> > Tairezazh has things like _mink_ "led", _mein_ "leads", "minst" "will
> > lead". These changes are, however, almost regular from a synchronical
>point of
> > view - /ei/ usually turns into /i/ before consonant clusters, tho'
>there's
> > some exceptions that involves /ei/s not descending form earlier /ei/ or
> > /i:/, like _veint_ "commune" from earlier _vexintu_ ("x"=[x]).
>
>That's interesting. So, does that result from a phonological rule
>limiting the number of moras per word?  I mean, I could imagine a
>circumstance where codas are not moraic, and you have a word like
>*meink (two moras: e and i), but along comes a rule stating that
>codas are moraic, which automatically makes a typologically weird
>word (four moras: e, i, n, k). So it simplifies one of the vowels
>to lessen the number of moras.  A word having three moras is not
>unheard of:  I believe Finnish and Estonian are usually analyzed
>like this.
We-ell, I'm not much into moras - indeed I hadn't even heard of the things
when the relevant changes were constructed.

One of the first changes on the road from Classical Klaish to Tairezazh was
/ei/ merging with /i:/. Later, long vowels were shortened before consonant
clusters - this resulted in many verbs having long /i:/ in the present and
short /i/ in the future and often also the past. Even later /i:/>/ei/.

So we get conjugations like

_mink_ "led", _mein_ "leads", _minst_ "will lead"
_tsheik_ "loved", _tshei_ "loves", _tshist_ "will love"

Words like _veint_, on the other hand never had a long /i:/ to be shortened
- the development is roughly _vexintu_>_vejinte_>_veint_.

It might be pointed out that the gerund of _tshei_ above is _tsheint_, from
earlier /tSi:ent/.

                                              Andreas

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