Re: [tied] *h3 (More deja-vu)

-----Original Message-----
From: tgpedersen [mailto:tgpedersen@...]
Sent: 2002 m. rugsėjo 30 d. 17:02
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [tied] *h3 (More deja-vu)

>> --- In cybalist@..., "Sergejus Tarasovas" <S.Tarasovas@...> wrote:

>>  What are the typological grounds for the statement that uvulars
>> trigger a-colouring (and not o-colouring, for instance)? What would
>> be a possible (neuro)physiological explanation? Just wondering.
 

>  With respect to Greenlandic, if I remember correctly now so many
years after, what my phonology teacher Jørn Rischel, who was involved
in the design of a spelling reform for it, said, it is a three-vowel
language (i, a, u), but before uvulars (eg /q/) /i/ has the
allophone /e/, and /u/ the allophone /o/ (present ending(?) -voq, -
poq). For convenience they decided to keep /e/ and /o/ in the
spelling in those cases. 

 

Isn't [i] -> [e] a plain lowering? That's what -- as I wrote in one of my previous messages -- exactly agrees with my language intuition. But is [e] -> [a] just a lowering? The latter would yield something like [æ], which is close to [front a], but far from [back a]. If post-uvular PIE *a was indeed fronted, I'm happy with the lowering effect of uvulars. But some state [front a] was a phonetic realization of early PIE *e, not *a.

 

Sergei