>>Aaah. And this somehow makes sense? I fail to see what credible
>>motivations cause the changes you prescribe. How can these differing
>>vowel positions possibly effect fronting on the one hand and
>>labialisation on the other? Are there direct, real-world examples
>>of these changes?
>
>I could obviously give hundreds of examples. Will English do?
No, dearie. Individual examples of this and that can be found
everywhere. I was refering to the COMBINED changes you
propose which remain overly complex and inefficient. You see,
what you're saying is that a long vowel simultanously develops
into three very different short vowels... hunh??
The fact remains that the position of a vowel does not cause
special fronting or roundness alone. This is usually caused by the
reshuffling of the vowel system or assimilation/dissimilation.
Please, along with your real-world example of your vocalic
"tri-splitting", explain the evolution of the IE vowel system
as a whole so that you may expose the logical flaws of your theory.
To show you what I mean, here's my explanation of the vowel
system:
1. MIE vowel system (c5500 BCE)
-------------------------------------------------
(*i) (*u)
*@
*a
2. Peripheralization of stressed *@ to *e
-------------------------------------------------
(*i) (*u)
*e *@
*a
3. Loss of unstressed vowels;
Some paradigmatic strengthening of *@ to *e
-------------------------------------------------
*i *u
*e
*a
4. Laryngeal-coloured allophone *A develops
from *e
-------------------------------------------------
*i *u
*e
*A
*a
5. Compensatory reshuffling of vowel system as
*A continues to lower to *a;
Original *a dissimilates to *o
-------------------------------------------------
*i *u
*e *o
*a
Notice the efficiency and lucidity of my theory. You will find
nothing contraversial about any of the above changes I propose.
I still fail to see how your view of the evolution of the vowel
system makes linguistic sense given what you're saying about
phonemes becoming three simultaneously based solely on position.
I don't think you understand how vowel systems work.
- love gLeN
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