[tied] Re: Unreality of One-Vowel Systems (was: Bader's article on

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
wrote:

> Correction: 32876 is your post responding to Glen's
> statement in 32869, in which he wrote:
>
> Likewise, that IE might be analysed as technically
> "monovocalic" means nothing to the question of the shape
> of the pre-IE vowel system. In fact, since sensible
> linguists are bound by language universals to reconstruct
> protolanguages properly, might we please keep remembering
> that one-vowel systems are _NON-EXISTENT_. It's not even
> considerable.
>
> I see nothing wrong with this statement. Piotr commented in
> 22560 that it's the 'level of systematic PHONETICS' [my
> emphasis] that determines the typology, and I assume that
> Glen is using 'one-vowel system' in the typological sense,
> and in that sense, to the best of my knowledge, they are
> indeed non-existent.

But in that case the whole statement does not apply in its context.
It was used to reproach me for seeing a typological parallel between
Sanskrit and the extremist view of PIE as analyzed by Saussure,
Cuny, Benveniste, Kurylowicz and many others. I said, and say now
again: if Sanskrit may have an even clearer one-vowel system on
whatever level that is valid, surely such a system is then
acceptable in typological terms and should not be excluded a priori
from the range of theoretical possibilities. Incidentally I do not
use such a system in any pure form for any phase of IE that I can
handle, I am only standing up for its rights. We are certainly
talking sophisticated phonology here, not phonetics. The outburst
was directed against me, and I do know what I was talking about.

Jens