Re: [tied] IE vowels

On Fri, 06 Jun 2003 17:09:36 +0000, Glen Gordon <glengordon01@...>
wrote:

>On the ancient allophony of *k and *q:
>>I don't understand what you're saying. What's the conection between
>>*q and *o?
>
>Glad you asked. PIE *o was once *a, a central unrounded low vowel. The
>*a that we find in PIE derives from earlier *A as in Canadian "cat" [kAt].
>It
>is the result of the lowering of *e in uvular environments or by the raising
>of former *a (>*o) to *A next to labial phonemes. So PIE *a was once
>the "in-between" vowel in terms of height of *e and *o.
>
>The connection between Mid IE *a (>*o) and *q is that both have
>the quality of [+low]. The vowel had imparted this quality to the velar,
>making it a uvular. Eventually, this *q allophone of *k became a distinct
>phoneme.

So you're saying that *q arose from **k in the neighbourhood of **a.

Wouldn't it be simpler to take *q as basic (i.e. there was an inherited
[Eskimo-Aleut, Kartvelian, Afro-Asiatic have uvulars] opposition between
velar *k *g *gh and uvular *q *G *Gh in pre-PIE) and explain the vowel
colouring as due to the *q (not the other way around)?

After all, how do get an *a or an *o in, to give only the first two
examples that come to mind, the suffix *-iq-, or the word *qrewh2- "blood /
raw meat"?


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