[tied] Abstractness (Was Re: [j] v. [i])

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2003 9:41 PM
> Subject: Re: [tied] Abstractness (Was Re: [j] v. [i])
>
>
> > Well, that's funny, for /e, i, u/ by an analysis along these

lines was

> exactly what Kurylowicz and Benveniste made for IE - and that was

rejected

> on *typological* grounds. Is typological wisdom only a matter of
> terminology?
>
> No. I said /a, i, u/ was impeccable (and common). /e, i, u/

(with /e/ a

> distinctively [+front] vowel, which is what makes the difference)

is indeed

> too odd. A quadrangular system such as /E, O, i, u/ (with a pair

of low

> vowels, one front, one back) would be acceptable, and the five-term
> inventory /a, e, o, i, u/ is possibly the most common type of

vowel system

> on earth.

But /e, i, u/ and /a, i, u/ are equivalent since the phonemes are
only defined by being different from each other. If the choice of
the notation /e/ in the former analysis was not meant to exclude its
having a-like allophones, and the choice /a/ of the latter does not
exclude an e-like realization, then the two notations mean exactly
the same thing. And then one cannot exclude one of them and accept
the other.

Jens