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

On 13 May 2004 Rob Haden <magwich78@Y...> wrote:

> Okay.  Yes, I have heard of that work -- it's (one of) the first source(s)
> to have the name "Magyar" in it (although I believe it is written "Mogeri"
> or "Megeri").
  Emperor Constantine used the word "Tourkoi" 'Turks' for the
Hungarians. Though, he mention the list of tribes, and the third
tribe is called "Megeré" (with eta in the end). The original
denomination was an inharmonic (and therefore compound) word
"Mogyeri": the back variant (Magyar) became an ethnonym, the front
variant became a tribe name.
  The very first source I know with this ethnonym is Jaihani (after
870 A.D.) -- cited by Ibn Rustah, Gardizi, Bakri, etc. -- in form
"m.j.gh.riya". However, Arab sources often confuse Magyars and
Bashkirs due to the typical Turkic m ~ b alternation. Thus it's
possible that "m.j.gh.riya" stands for "Bajghir" 'Bashkir'.

> I'm not sure if 'sydän' is an exact cognate to *sivä.  The open
> /E/ is most certainly descended from earlier /{/.  If *ä > /E/ and
> *e: > /e/, then what did *e become?
  I didn't use //'s for "*e:", because "*e:" here is the
reconstucted phoneme "*e" followed by a clause-saparating colon.
Thus *e became /e/.
  The exact quality of *ä is indifferent in the Hungarian language
history. The only important consideration is that it's always more
open than *e.

> I have read that Hungarian exibits both palatal and labial
> harmony, as Altaic languages do.  Is this true?
  Hungarian knows labial harmony in a small set of suffixes.
However, labial harmony is a subtype of the palatal harmony,
therefore there're only three classes: velar, palatal illabial,
palatal labial. This is characteristic only for short and mid
suffix vowels: o /o/ ~ e /e/ ~ ö /2/.

  The labial harmony is a new development in Turkic languages, too,
there's no a common Turkic sheme. E.g. Oghuz languages exhibits
labial harmony only on close suffix vowels /i/ ~ /u/ ~ /1/ ~ /y/. A
large group of Kipchak languages don't know labial harmony, others
use /a/ ~ /E/ ~ /o/ triplets.

> Hungarian nyíl, earlier *n'ïlä, and Finnish nuoli, earlier *no:li,
> agree on the consonants but not the vowels -- *n'V(:)lV.  Is it
> possible that Hungarian (or its ancestor) de-rounded vowels next to
> palatal consonants?
  I list the derivations of this etymon from Etymologisches
Wörterbuch des Ungarischen (EWUng).
- illabial: Hungarian /Ji:l/, Vogul /n'e:l/, Zyrien /n'1l/, Votyak
/n'il, n'3l, n'el/, Kamass /nie/.
- labial: Ostyak /n'al/, Cheremiss /n2l2-pikS/, Mordvin /nal/,
Finnish /nuoli/, NLappish /JuollA/, Nenets /tu:n'n'i/.
  Therefore, it seems that both labial and illabial forms go back
to PU (as an early dialectal variation). Morover, the possible
areal cognates -- Manchurian /niru/, Tunguz /n'ur/ -- shows also
dimorphism.

  The palatal consonants don't cause a regular illabialization in
Hungarian, cf. nyúl /Ju:l/ 'hare, rabbit' ~ NLappish njoammel,
nyuszt /Just/ 'marten' ~ Estonian nugis, nyál /Ja:l/ 'saliva' ~
Finnish nolki, etc.

> I don't think this is always necessarily the case.  I think it is
> as easy for vowels to become more open as it is for them to be
> closed.
  Any arguments? Or, examples of posttonic opening?
  Open vowels require more articulation effort (you have to open
your mouth, lower your tongue after the very close consonats). Your
statement means that it's easy for posttonic vowels to be
pronounced with more articulation effort as it is for them with
less articulation effort. I don't see the phonetical background of
your argument.

> Again, if that was the case from PFU to Finnish, then why does
> Finnish preserve final -A in other words, such as kala 'fish'?
> Shouldn't that have become *kali?
  Again: our Finnish examples came from the literary language, that
is an auxlang. Agricola -- the pricipal founder of the Finnish
literary languge -- was born in Pernaja, worked in Turku. He used
mainly this south-west dialect in his works. Becker and Lönnrot
preferred Eastern dialects (e.g. 2pl personal suffix -vAt). The
present-day Finnish is a compromise between Finnish dialects: some
characteristics came form west, others from east etc.

  The south-west dialect group is a bridge to the Estonian: they
show advanced erosion of the word endings. E.g. (1) in disyllable
words if the first, stressed syllable was long by position (i.e.
the vowel was long of followed by a consonant cluster), cf.
dialectal pitk ~ literary pitkä 'long'. (2) In word that have more
than two syllables, the last vowel always disappear, cf. teräv ~
terävä 'sharp', and sometimes the second syllable drops out, too,
cf. vask ~ vasikka 'calf', lusk ~ lusikka 'spoon'.
  In Karelian, we find a close ending vowel in the above cases,
that is, they are half-way to disappear.

  Finnish literary tälvi originates from a dialect that tends to
reduce ending consonants after a positionally long stressed vowel,
while kala has a positionally short stressed vowel.

-------

  There was a thread about Finno-Ugric numerals '8' and '9'. For
this reason, I've translated my comparative charts on the Uralic
numerals into English. It can be downloaded from
<http://romanid.fw.hu/varia/UralicNumbers.pdf>

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