Re: [tied] How to prepare **udon soup

Miguel:

>The loss of short *i and *u at some stage in pre-PIE is something
>that is imposed on us by the facts

Well, we can all agree on that, thank god.

>The loss of the high vowels is in itself a reasonably common thing
>to happen: [...] Certainly, in the *majority* cases one would expect the
>slots to be filled *pretty soon*.

You're hopelessly confused. We just finished telling you that
vowel systems without a high/low contrast don't exist... So...
That obviously means that there are no languages that "lose" their
high vowels. The vowels may shift places, but there is ALWAYS a
relative high vowel in the system.

>Kabardian (and NW Caucasian in general) would seem to be a
>counterexample,[...] their two-vowel system *& ~ *a(:) [analyzable
>as underlying /a/ ~ /a:/, as Pa:n.ini would like].

Until monovocalism exists, your Panini pal continues to be a fool.

>So maybe I can change the order of the developments, [...]

How 'bout this: Maybe you can change your vowel system to comply
with normal human standards of phonology.

- love gLeN


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