I have just been informed that during this last month one Silas O'Toole, a dedicated abstractionist known apparently to his linguistic colleagues as "Rules" O'Toole, in a paper delivered to the Linguistic Circle of Wyoming, proposed deriving Middletown from Moses with "only eighteen ordered processes."
I will not dignify these "rules" by repeating them here; O'Toole obviously takes us for a bunch of lowwatt bulbs. Who, blown by what ghastly winds of theory, is going to believe, outside of Wyoming at any rate, that from five segments you can get eight? Forms do not attract matter to them like black holes in the course of their derivations; rather they lose matter, like shrinking stars.
I have therefore proceeded to invert O'Toole's analysis and derive instead Moses from Middletown; there are two possibilities. (To be sure, the first alternative leaves the issue of accretion vs. loss somewhat moot.)
| //midltawn// | |
| idltawn deletion | m |
| -oziz insertion | moziz |
This solution definitely has the advantage of simplicity, but the rules seem somewhat ad hoc. The second solution posits rules which are or will be wellmotivated either (a) now or (b) later:
| //midltawn// | |
| d-Assimilation | milltawn |
| l-Deletion | miltawn |
| l-Deletion schon wieder mal | mitawn |
| Spirantization | misawn |
| Voizing | mizawn |
| Monoflippinphthongization | mizon |
| Vowel Harmono | mozon |
| Syncope | mozn |
| Anglo-Frisian Brightening | <:-> |
| n Assimilation | mozz |
| Epenthesis | moziz |
Metalleus