acrostatic

So if, for example, there originally was a nominative *ʔékwa-s 'horse' vs. a genitive *ʔekwá-s 'of the horse' in early Late IE and, let's say, a new "acrostatic" rule was imposed on vowel-ending noun stems (a.k.a. thematic noun stems) to fix their accent always on the first syllable regardless of case (thereby getting rid of some clunky root-only alternations of accent), then I would suppose that the resultant homophony of nominative and genitive *ʔékwa-s would be as disturbing for some Indo-European speakers as it is for modern English speakers who are prone to hypercorrect "Thomas' shoe" to "Thomas's shoe" to maintain the same distinction between the nominative subject "Thomas" and its potentially identical possessive form.

Sporadic phonetic changes in the Indo-European case system 2008

So if, for example, there originally was a nominative *ʔékwa-s 'horse' vs. a genitive *ʔekwá-s 'of the horse' in early Late IE and, let's say, a new "acrostatic" rule was imposed on vowel-ending noun stems (a.k.a. thematic noun stems) to fix their accent always on the first syllable regardless of case (thereby getting rid of some clunky root-only alternations of accent), then I would suppose that the resultant homophony of nominative and genitive *ʔékwa-s would be as disturbing for some Indo-European speakers as it is for modern English speakers who are prone to hypercorrect "Thomas' shoe" to "Thomas's shoe" to maintain the same distinction between the nominative subject "Thomas" and its potentially identical possessive form.

Archive 2008-02-01 2008

This contrasts with MIE polysyllabic roots conjugated in the 1p like *béra-mai/*bara-ménai which would later become 'Nartenized' to early Late IE *bḗr-mi/*ber-méni before secondarily acquiring acrostatic accentuation in the heart of the Late IE period.

Where do Narten presents come from? 2009

This contrasts with MIE polysyllabic roots conjugated in the 1p like *béra-mai/*bara-ménai which would later become 'Nartenized' to early Late IE *bḗr-mi/*ber-méni before secondarily acquiring acrostatic accentuation in the heart of the Late IE period.

Archive 2009-08-01 2009

Even more handy when the accent shifts to the initial syllable in acrostatic nouns during this period but perhaps the strong form was levelled throughout the paradigm already by this time.

Rasmussen's consonantal *o and laryngeal deletion 2008

Both refer to an acrostatic paradigm *wódr̥/*wédn-.

I tripped over Pre-IE the other day 2008

The reason behind this seemingly pointless circumlocution would make sense if acrostatic nouns, which fix their accent only on the first syllable of a word no matter what the grammatical case of the noun, had evolved out of protero- and hysterodynamic nouns, which alternate accent between noun stem and case ending depending on grammatical case.

Sporadic phonetic changes in the Indo-European case system 2008

The reason behind this seemingly pointless circumlocution would make sense if acrostatic nouns, which fix their accent only on the first syllable of a word no matter what the grammatical case of the noun, had evolved out of protero- and hysterodynamic nouns, which alternate accent between noun stem and case ending depending on grammatical case.

Archive 2008-02-01 2008