Re: Verb-second ... verb-penultimate languages?

On 24/04/06, Thomas Wier <trwier@...> wrote:
> [Delurking:]
...
> summer, he made the claim that all -ing forms in English are
> completely regular, and I had to pipe up that in my dialect
People make a lot of claims about things that happen in English. I
would hazard that the majority can be falsified by looking at one
dialect or another, and the appropriate response is "that wasn't the
dialect of English I was studying or referring to", as long as you're
not trying to make universal-style generalisations.

> the participle of the verb "to lightning" is "lightning",
> not "lightninging", to which he responded that it was probably
> some haplological phonological fact.  This can't be true for me,
> however, since I do say "singing".)
I would think stress trivially takes care of that. Consider
    "prairie" ["pre:ri], *[pre:], *[pri] and
    "librarian" [lAe"brerij@n], *[lAe"brij@n], *[lAe"brej@n] versus
    "library" ["lAebri], *["lAebreri], *["lAebre(:)].
(I think the equivalent American pronunciation of "library" is
stigmatised, but it's stress that determines the haplology that's my
concern.)

--
Tristan.