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

On 9 May 2004 Rob Haden <magwich78@...> wrote:

> What does the '_x' mean?
  I've mistyped the '_x', the correct for would have been '_X', which
means that the preceeding consonant is extra-short, reduced.

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

  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.

  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.

  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.