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Re: OT: Evolution of dialects (was Re: Tirelat and related dialects)

From:Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
Date:Friday, September 26, 2008, 1:56
Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

> Maybe the problematic status of Tirelat (IIRC) > stress and length which you, Herman, mentioned > some weeks back is because the dialects which > formed the base of the standard language had > actually lost length, but it was erratically > reintroduced from erratic spellings where the old > graphies for long vowels had partly come to be > used to mark stress?
I think it's possible that words like "katee" (arch) may have had short vowels originally, but stressed vowels in final position were lengthened in the standard dialect: /ka'te/ -> /ka'te:/ . In that case, the dialects that retain the pronunciation /ka'te/ are preserving the original form of the word. Also, the "epenthetic" vowels in numerous words correspond with regular unstressed vowels in other dialects. But other explanations are possible. Stress may have become phonemic when the distinction between long and short vowels was lost. In any case, it's possible that a "vowel length" mark may have been interpreted as a "stress" mark or vice versa.