Re: [tied] Re: PIE & Sanskrit Vowel Counts (was: Nominative: A hybr

On Wed, 04 Jun 2003 21:11:04 +0000, Richard Wordingham
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

>> This is the PIE system. In tabular form:
>>
>> stressed +Sz-length unstr. +Sz-length svarita +Sz-length
>> *a é é: -- o: o o:
>> *a- é/ó e/o
>> *a: ó ó: e e:
>> *i é é: -- o: e e:
>> *-i í yé:(?) i ye: i ye:
>> *i: é: -- yo:(?)
>> *-i: yé: i yo:(?)
>> *u é é: -- o: o o:
>> *-u ú wé:(?) u wo:(?) wo wo:
>> *u: ó ó: -- o:
>> *-u: wó wó:(?) u wo:(?)
>
>I think you meant to have /e/ and /e:/ for *i in svarita position.

Yes. So corrected above.

>The table is misleading, for as you say in the narrative, you see
>some instances of what you show ó as actually being ó: (the contrast
>does not seem to be phonemic), whence Brugmann's law.

Yes. The contrast can be allowed to continue into Indo-Iranian because *o:
by Szemerényi lengthening necessarily occurs in a closed syllable (-VC-s or
-VC-h2), exactly where *ó: from *á: does not, and *o: from *oh3 is
relatively rare.

>What saves you from having a two vowel system (or rather a four vowel
>system) is the unpredictability of /é/ v. /é:/. This extra phoneme
>is in the typologically correct place!
>
>What does '*a-' mean? I can't relate it to your narrative.

Thematic vowel (*a before morpheme break -), I forgot to add a note to that
effect.


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...