Re: ka and k^a [was: [tied] *kW- "?"]

From: Grzegorz Jagodzinski
Message: 40377
Date: 2005-09-23

glen gordon wrote:
> Rob:
>> I am inclined to take all words with apparently
>> non-alternating /a/ to be loanwords borrowed after
>> IE had (re-)phonemicized /a/.
>
> Unnecessary hypothesis. There is nothing a priori
> "foreign" about *a. You can't have a vowel system
> without it!
>
>
> = gLeN

Really? And what about Hungarian? Among short vowels, we have only <a> (in
spelling) which is something like open o rather (anyway, it does not seem to
be equal to IPA low back rounded vowel).

And what about English, esp. British? Has it /a/?

Spoken Arabic has only the allophone [a] of the phoneme whose basic
pronunciation is [e] rather.

Late Common Slavic vowel system had not short "a" either. Yes, it was a
transitional state - and so it was with PIE. But *o > a in most PIE
branches, only Italo-Celtic and Greek preserved the old "o" unchanged.

Grzegorz J.



___________________________________________________________
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com