A while back I bought at the local B&N’s used book area the book Introduction to the ‘Laryngeal’ Theory by Frederick Otto Lindeman. I’ve been reading it a little lately, just for fun. It is not a topic I’m totally unfamiliar with; much younger, I took a class on IE linguistics, but I don’t think I was in a good place at the time to really learn it. I may not be now either, but now I’m reading it for fun. It’s probably the most abstruse thing I’ve read for fun in a long time. (I’m only 1/4 or 1/3 of the way through it; may or may not finish).
Anyway, it mentioned the process by which a CVC syllable in a parent language turns into a CV syllable, with the vowel long. The process is very common and is known as “compensatory lengthening.”
And all I could think was “Compensatory Lengthening? That’s what all those spam messages are trying to sell me.”
Thank you, I’ll be here all week.
Wikipedia’s “Laryngeal Theory” page rocks, btw, if you’re curious what it’s all about.
Huh? :-)