Re: 'Vocalic Theory'

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ryan" wrote:

> From: "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...>

>> The PIE colouring resistance is probably an instance of a
>> language-specific feature - just like Dutch umlaut resistance, and the
>> fact that glottalisation colours vowels in some languages but not in
>> others. (Arabic emphatics are not glottalised, but their cognates are
>> in some Semitic languages.)

> When you say 'language specific', you destroy the validity of any

general

> rule we make.

No-one is claiming a general rule. Note that the language I have in
mind is PIE.

> When you say that length inhibits 'coloring', you are saying that the
> 'coloring' effect works on /e/ but not /e/ + /e/ = /e:/.

> That makes no sense at all physiologically.

> I cannot speak to Dutch umlaut resistance except to say in a general

way

> that some groups of speakers seem willing to allowing following vowel
> quality to be anticipated in the primary vowel, and some do not. To

me, it

> is a physical thing else all languages would have a brand of vowel
> rmony - which they do not.

Note that they all allowed short vowels to be umlauted.

There is one example where laryngeal colouring fully affected short
vowels but only partially long vowels - lamedh guttural stems in
Classical Hebrew. Treating lenition as merely allophonic, we can compare:

1) Segholates: _mélek_ 'king' v. _mélaH_ 'salt'
2) Jussive of hiph`il: _yikbe:d_ 'let him honour' v. _yis^laH_
'let him send'

v.

3) Hiph`il: _hikbi:d_ 'honour' v. _his^li:aH_ 'send'

(On a simple view, there is a race condition between lengthening of
final vowels in stressed closed syllables i > e: and of colouring i > a.)

Long vowels are 'broken' rather than coloured, but generally such
breaking can be 'smoothed' away. Had this happened in Hebrew, we
would have had laryngeal colouring of short vowels but no effect on
long vowels. As it is, we get the breaking effectively known as
furtive pathah rather than full colouring.

Is it possible to have a phonemic analysis where furtive pathah is
purely an allophonic effect? If so, we could claim an even better
analogy to PIE.

Richard.