accusative and ergative languages

[CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU]

After some illuminating discussion of Germanic ablaut, petegray wrote:

>Some Germanic ablaut is indeed the result of "vowel harmony" with a vowel in
>an ending which has since been lost - but this example is not one.

Germanic ablaut *never* results from vowel harmony.  You're thinking of umlaut,
in which a stressed vowel is assimilated to the articulation of a following
segment: in the most common instance, back vowels before /i i: j/ are fronted
and become [-low]: PGmc. gasti:z > OHG gesti > German G"aste 'guests', PGmc.
*fo:dijan > OE f"odan > later OE fe:dan > modern feed.  Umlaut is a much later
process (it's an on-going process in Old High German) than ablaut, which was
conditioned in part by stress but not by vowel harmony.

Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis