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

On Sat, 8 May 2004 20:35:46 +0100, Tamas Racsko <tracsko@...> wrote:

>  We don't find evidences of long vowels on the line of Ugric
>languages. Their development is clearly traceable in Hungarian, the
>main processes are:
>
>1. Disappearance of intervocalic consonants followed by the fusion
>of successive vowels, e.g. a'cs /a:tS/ 'carpenter' < */aatSi_x/ <
>*/aGatSi/ < Turkic aghach1; I have Finnish examples too, e.g. ja:a:
>'ice' < PFU /jENe/ > Hungarian je'g
What does the '_x' mean?


>2. Compensatory lengthening due to the disappearence of the vowel
>of the next syllable. Two main types in Hungarian:
>a) Disappearance of word-final vocals: e.g. (11th century) utu
>   /utu_x/ > (modern) u't /u:t/ 'way, road', but also above je'g <
>  *jegi 'ice'. (N.B. These lemmas have a vocalic stem, cf. uta.k
>  'ways', jege.s 'icy')
The same thing happened from Middle English to Modern English.  For
example, 'name' was originally pronounced /nam@/, and then became /na:m/
after deletion of final schwa.  It ultimately came to be pronounced /ne:m/.

A question: why isn't the plural form for 'way, road' utu.k instead of
uta.k?

- Rob

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