Re: Compensatory Lengthening

Rob Haden wrote:
> Thanks for your replies so far, guys.
>
> One question I have is, how likely would the following processes be?
>
> VCV: > V:CV
> VCC > V:C
>
> Could those be considered compensatory lengthening?
>
Your VCC > V:C, definitely. As Andreas Johansson pointed out in his reply--
"I thought compensatory lengthening was by _definition_ due to the loss of a
segment."

Andreas also gave an example: VCV > V:C ("presumably to perserve prosodic
length/mora count"). So that seems to leave your first ex. up in the air--
no segment is lost, length/mora count remains the same. "Displacement" (to
coin a term?) might apply, particularly if the case was -VCV:#-- (perh. the
result of adding a -V suffix to a final V) and the language had a rule
forbidding V: in word final position.