[tied] Re: Slavic peoples and places

--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@...> wrote:

> That's a strange allophone-pair. I think Proto-Slavic had a rule,
> more or less, that syllables (and words) had to start with a

consonant

> and to end with a vowel. If the initial consonant was

etymologically

> absent, [w-] was added before back vowels, and [j-] before front

ones,

> in general. But [?-] and [h-] were also acceptable. I don't think
> the term "allophone" is appropriate, as the prosthesis was

automatic,

> and the prosthetic sound was not really a phoneme.

I have nothing against this interpretation, but what puzzles me is
that systematic treatments of Proto-Slavic seem to treat protetic [j]
and [w] as phonemes (after all, it's written, eg, *vUn
in "normalized" form, not *Un). Strange asymmetry.

Sergei