Re: CV metathesis Q

Jeffrey Jones wrote:
> 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?
How about elision instead?  Stems all started as CVCVCV.  In some cases
second V is elided, others third V.  Maybe first vowel after the
accented syllable (before the Great Accent Shift, of course) disappears.

That's pretty much how I generate words: start with random CV x N and
apply sound rules designed to yield something that looks sort of Slavic,
with a decidedly nonregular syllable structure.  Only for me elision is
not based on accent, instead there are some vowel sounds that disappear,
but they color nearby sounds.  (Gee, I wonder if there are any
historical natlang families we know of that have sounds like that?)
Probably this wouldn't work for your case though.

Cool example (pasting Unicode, hope it works):

ðYpiHYhækYHura -> þpixkur


Carl Banks