--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:
>
> Assuming for the sake of the argument that [i] and [j] (<y>) never
> contrast in Sanskrit, how does one prove that an analysis which
makes
> [j] a non-syllabic allophone of /i/ is less highly valued? At the
> level of systematic phonetics, Sanskrit has quite a few vowels
> (definitely including /i/ and /u/) -- _real_ vowels, no doubt about
> that. That is what determines its place in the typology of vowel
> inventories, whatever one's favourite abstract analysis of Sanskrit
> morphophonology.
I have no idea about preferences, but one compares languages
typologically by using equal standards. And the analysis of PIE that
was rejected on typological grounds was one granting consonantal
status to anything that has a consonantal allophone. You are surely
not denying the existence of /y/ and /v/ as consonants in Sanskrit,
are you? Then, if they are in complementary distribution with /i/
and /u/ (which they indeed are to an astoundingly high degree), what
should be the "names" of the phonemes combining the alternants? The
point is that, apart from the odd cases of unpredictable
syllabification, there is only one phoneme in this language which
*must* be given the status of a vowel, and that is /a/. Is that not
true?
Jens