I don't think so. A language without any
a-like vowels (with at least allophonic status) would be a typological oddity.
An unmarked vowel will occur frequently to compensate for its tendency to be
elided. Anyway, I haven't yet said that Glen's analysis of Tyrrhenian is
correct. I only proposed a mechanism that could account for the kind of effect
suggested by Glen.
BTW, his stress rule is the mirror image of
the Old French stress pattern: stress the final syllable unless it contains
schwa (in which case stress the penult). Note also that French final-syllable
schwa typically derived from Proto-Romance *a
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2001 2:02 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Glen's Strange Rule
OK, thank you very much. Was this
disappearance of /a/ (= /&/ ?) in the first syllable part of a general
disappearance of /a/ in Etruscan?