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

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Grzegorz Jagodzinski"
<grzegorj2000@...> wrote:

> 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).

Yes, Magyar /a/ = [O] (i.e. British English short 'o'), /a:/ (written
<á>) = /a:/ (i.e. the 'a' in "father").

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

Not really, from what I understand. Even words like "father", in
British English, are often pronounced like "fother". In the
relatively few words that end in -a, the /a/ is pronounced like a
schwa.

> 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.

This may sound like a stupid question, but is Balto-Slavic presumed
to have separate reflexes for *o:? What I'm wondering is if Italo-
Celtic and Greek were innovative, further backing *a > o, and the
other branches conservative, keeping *a as /a/.

- Rob