More on Long Vowels

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Koontz John E wrote:
> However, he has many instances of gagha'=bi-ama, gagha'=bi=the,
> gagha'=bi=egaN, gagha'=i=ga.
>
> I don't know quite what to make of this.  Perhaps he heard
> ga<H>gha<L>bi<L>a<L>mA with a fall from ga<H> to gha<L> so that gha<L>
> appeared to be the point of stress.  It may even have been louder or at
> least more salient in some sense, from the English speaker's point of view
> I can't think of a way to interpret this in terms of the influence of
> length.

OK, I did think of a way.  If the (ablauted) theme (stem-final) vowel -a-
before =bi is long, whether or not the preceding root-internal vowel in
gagh- is long, then that would, I think, make an English speaker perceive
the theme vowel as accented.  But if only the root-internal vowel is long
(or if neither is), then it seems hard to understand why Dorsey marks it
as accented.

So perhaps writing gagha'=bi=ama is consistent with

ga(a)'ghaa=bi=ama

where V' (accenting) marks the last high vowel, and VV marks length.

Adding accents to clarify matters:

> I can't think, off hand, of a dh-stem that behaves like ga'ghe or
> daN'be in terms of stress.  Even examples like dhathe' 'eat' that may
> not be instrumental stems seem to treat dha as a "light" syllable.

I'm trying, I hope correctly, to distinguish the accentual pattern of
CV(V)'CV stems from that of CVCV' stems, even though many of the latter
(e.g., dhVCV' stems) do develop first syllable accent in the first person
and second person due to b- and s^- behaving like syllables for purposes
of accentuation.

    make/do                                 eat

I   ppaa'ghe                                bdha'the
you s^kaa'ghe                               [s^]na'the
he  gaa'ghe ~ gaa'gha[=i]                   dhathe' ~ dhatha'[=i]

JEK