About the Yew1

[Stanley Friesen]

At 03:37 PM 7/20/01 -0500, proto-language wrote:

>Dear Douglas and IEists:

>The example you give, capis, seems to me to be different. if R = root vowel,
>it is CRCid-.

>pe:s, of course, would be CRd-.

>This could, of course, be a Dehnstufe but does not the absence of /d/ make one
>question that a bit. Furthermore, gradation is normally associated with
>syntactic or grammatical usages. What function would the Dehnstufe serve here?

I have seen no convincing (to me) cases which require a true Dehnstufe in
PIE proper.  Just about every lengthened grade I have seen can either be
traced to some form compensatory lengthening (often, but not always, due to
loss of laryngeals), or is a reasonable analogical extension of such a
lengthening.

This leads me to suspect that grammatical lengthened grades are analogical
extensions of compensatory lengthened grades that developed in the
individual dialects.  Note, in this model I treat lengthening due to loss
of laryngeals as simply one particular (and common) type of compensatory
lengthening.

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May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net