[tied] Re: Short and long vowels

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

> Consider marking PIE 'zero-grade' as extra short. If we weren't
> limited to Latin-1, I'd suggest writing a breve on top of the

vowel.

> As it is, you could capitalise them to indicate superscript, as in

the

> transliteration of the Hebrew hatephs. If you don't care for the
> phonetic interpretation, think of it as mere spelling. I think the
> notation would be helpfully suggestive, *if* you can

think 'capital =

> superscript'.

It doesn't sound like a good idea to me. The intent is to support
Patrick's non-coloring laryngeal hypothesis, right?
* It duplicates notation: Your *E = *&1, *A = *&2, *O = *&3
* Your *A collides with Patrick's *A for the Ablaut vowel.
* Patrick's zero-grade (as I understand it) is full short.

> Talking of notation, we normally write the laryngeals h1, h2, h3

here

> rather than H1, H2, H3 to avoid accidental confusion with

aspiration.

I second Pavel A. da Mek's comments on this (in post 39370).