Re: Nominative: A hybrid view

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fortuna11111" <fortuna11111@...>
wrote:

> Hi Rob,
>
> >
> > Am I correct in saying that your point is basically that the
> > differences in vowel quality between "dom" and "dem" were
> originally
> > differences in tone?
>
> Yes. Most generally, all speech should have been just tone in
> the beginning.

Ah, excellent. While I disagree that the earliest language should've
been completely tonal, I do think that there was some stage of PIE
that had a tonal accent.

> > If so, this gives credence to my belief that PIE -- or its parent
> > language -- had a very neutral vowel system centered around
> the low
> > central vowel /a/.
>
> That would sound interesting as an idea. I would indeed
> describe a as being neutral.

OK.

> Any monovocalic system will likely have /a/ as
> > its vowel, as you've pointed out that /a/ allows for the fullest
> > possible voice.
>
> It is simply neither too deep, nor too shallow, nor too rounded or
> too wide. It is a compromise.
>
> That being said, (Pre-)PIE was *not* entirely
> > monovocalic. The low central vowel was articulated two
> different
> > ways: with a high tone (> & "schwa" > e) and a low tone (> a >
> o).
>
> This sounds very logical.

Thanks. Did you see what Jens said regarding Sanskrit and
monovocality? Although Sanskrit is not a monovocalic language, it
has /a/ where PIE has /e/, /o/, or /a/. This raises two
possibilities:

1. Sanskrit levelled all prior e/o (Ablaut) alternations.

2. Sanskrit's immediate ancestor and its relatives (presumably, the
entire Indo-Aryan group) broke off from PIE before the Ablaut
occurred.

Choice #2 seems controversial, but there is evidence for it besides
what's mentioned above. Sanskrit has PIE /ei/, /oi/, /ai/ > /e/,
and /eu/, /ou/, /au/ > /o/. It seems more logical to me that
Sanskrit's ancestor(s) broke off of PIE before Ablaut, and thus never
had /ei/, /oi/, /eu/, or /ou/, but simply /ai/ and /au/, which can
easily turn into /e/ and /o/, respectively.

- Rob