Re: [tied] IS's "regular roots"

On Sun, 28 Jan 2001 15:25:45 -0000, "petegray"
<petegray@...> wrote:

>> CVC roots (20*5*20
>> makes 2,000 roots or less, which is clearly insufficient).
>
>Mandarin Chinese manages with a CV syllable structure, 24 consonants, and 21
>vowels, making a possible total of 501 syllables - not all of which actually
>occur! So 2,000 does not seem so impossible by contrast.
>
>Mandarin copes, of course, through tones (4 plus neutral) and through a
>large number of bisyllabic words - e.g. the form that gave "look-see" in
>English. So a language with "2,000 roots or less" could certainly devise
>strategies for unambiguous communication.
>
>We already know that accent helped to differentiate forms in PIE. A "2,000
>root or less" language could also easily have had accents, tones or
>suprasegmental elements that don't show up in the brute arithmetic of
>consonants and vowels.

Stress accent wouldn't help in a CV(C) system...

>So your statement that it is "clearly insufficient" is not necessarily
>correct.

I was discussing the case of a hypothetical Bomhard-like
reconstruction, but with the phonological inventory stripped, and no
mention of tones, etc. Ehret's "Proto-Afrasian" is also CVC, but at
least he posits 2 por 3 tones (in itself not unreasonable: Chadic,
Cushitic and Omotic contain tonal languages). There are 42 consonants
and 10 vowels in his system.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...