Re: CV metathesis Q

JJ:
<<
I've been googling and it seems most morphology theorists disapprove
of this
sort of thing.
 >>

Which morphologists?

JJ:
<<
I've been playing with a sketch where most of the verbs have two basic
stems, CVCVC and CVCCV, to which a number of affixes are added. Mostly,
I've been working on filling in the specific morphology and on
subsequent
development (sound changes etc.) but recently, I started wondering
exactly
how the two stems came about in the first place. Any ideas?

I should probably mention that the first stem can take (C)V(C)
suffixes while
the second can take C((C)V) suffixes and that some of the suffixes
also have
alternating forms (CVC vs. CCV and VC vs. CV).
 >>

How stable are the stems?  If they're not very stable, it kind
of reminds me of Potawatomi, the language my wife did her
master's on.  In Potawatomi, you have a template:

CCVC(C)VC(C)VC(C)V...

All words want to fit into this template.

So if you have "I walk", you have /nbemse/.  "He walks" is
/bmose/.  The first word just has an /n-/ prefix, but that
prefix changes the character of the word (the vowels and
where they are) in a predictable fashion.

This sound similar.  If, though, the first CVC element is fixed,
that's, I guess, a little bizarre.  You'd essentially have a local
domain of variability at the end of a word.  All you'd need to
do is determine which stems do it and why.  Set them up in
classes; see what you can find.  If you have minimal pairs...

manak-tas
manka-ta

...then it might be a little more difficult to explain.  In that first
example, I'd say one was a true [a] originally, the other a schwa.
Don't know why the final consonant would disappear.  That's a
little bizarre.  I mean, it's not affected by the change at all.  Why
are the two suffix types (C)V(C) and (C)CV?  (Oh, wait, I see...
It's C((C)V)...  Let me revise the above):

manak-as
manka-s

There you go.  So let's say the top [a] kept because it couldn't
be reduced; the bottom one was a product of schwa deletion,
but then you couldn't have a word that ended in CC, so an
epenthetic vowel was inserted: [a].

Of course, this only holds if the phonology supports it.  You
can't just do it templatically.

To me, this seems far from implausible.  Perhaps the implementation
makes it look a bit more implausible...?

-David
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