Re: Phonemic vocalic length in PU/PFU (was Re: Questions about Hungarian)

On Tue, 11 May 2004 21:36:22 +0100, Racsko Tamas <tracsko@...>
wrote:

>  The word-final vowels had the following series of changes in the Old
>Hungarian.
>
>1. Base form: */uta/ 'road', */sivE/ 'heart'
>2. Word-final vowels became close: */utu/, */sivy/
>3. Word-final close vowels became reduced: /utu_X/, /sivy_X/
>4. Word-final reduced vowels disappear with compensatory lengthening:
>   /u:t/, /si:v/
Are there historical attestations of original *uta and *sivä?

What causes the rounding when open vowels become close?

>  Before "original" suffixes, the last vowel of the word was not in
>word-final position, therefore it remained in its original open form,
>i.e. the "a" of "uta.k" is the preserved variant.
So acc. sg. of 'road' is utat.  Is the nominative plural of szív 'heart'
szivek, acc. sg. szivet?

Is the nom. pl. of nyíl 'arrow' nyilek?

>  This ambiguity makes us possible to distinguish between orginal
>suffixes (like plural marker -k, accusative marker -t) that are
>attached to the long, vocalic stem, and the new developments (like
>dative -nak(nek, inessive -ban/ben) that were postpositions 8and not
>suffixes) in the time of the above vowel change and therefore they are
>added to the short stem.
Is the dat. sg. for 'road' utnak or utunak?  Inessive utban or utuban?

>  This is why the Hungarian Uralists consider the Finnish word-final
>/i/'s as a secondary development in constrast to the stem forms
>containing /e/. The word-final vowel reduction is a common process.
I understand why they think that.  However, the reverse process can also
happen.  For example, in Latin, word-final /i/ became /e/: active
infinitive *legesi 'to read' > legere, *animali 'animal' > animal(e).

On another note, I have read a book by a Dr. Marcantonio that posits that
Magyar is not actually a Uralic language, but an Altaic one.  However, in
our discussions, it seems that Magyar is indeed Uralic, although its
lexicon is borrowed heavily from Turkic (and other Altaic?) languages.

You appear to be correct, Racsko, in that the Ugric languages lost any
long vowel distinctions inherited from Proto-Uralic, and that those long
vowels which do appear in Magyar are the result of independent
phonological processes.

- Rob