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

On Thu, 05 Jun 2003 11:05:14 +0000, Glen Gordon <glengordon01@...>
wrote:

>>This leaves:
>>
>>stressed *&' (*^&', *"&') *á: *^é: *"ó: (*-í *-ú)
>>unstressed *& (*^&, *"&) *a
>>svarita *a: *^e: *"o:
>
>Erh, why is *i and *u parenthesized?

They only occurred in the Auslaut.

>This is a typologically unbalanced system without them.

No it isn't.

e: o:
&
a:

is perfectly alright.

>>We now have:
>>
>>stressed *é *ó (~ *ó:) *é: (*-í, *-ú)
>>unstressed *& *e
>>svarita *e *o
>
>Well, the parenthesized *i and *u irked me in the previous
>"stage" of yours but now the lack of *a makes me down
>right mad. This most definitely _is_ a typologically imaginary
>vowel system and automatically makes your theory
>unremediably suspect.

I didn't include PIE *a in my summary, which was an omission.
At the stage above, we also had the marginal phoneme *á/*a in the
neighbourhood of *k, *g, *gh, *h2 (a variant of *&/*é), and *á~: ~ *á~ in
the neighbourhood of nasals (a variant of *ó(:)).

Still, there is no denying that *a was extremely rare in PIE, a fact that
needs to be explained. My explanation, as given here, is a development **a

> **& > *e.

>>stressed *é *ó *é: *ó: *í *ú
>>unstressed *e *o: *e: *i *u
>>svarita *e *o *e: *o:
>
>Ugh, it's still without *a! What does Miguel call this crazy
>conlang?

PIE. Again, I *do* recognize a PIE *a, but only as a marginal phoneme,
outside of the main developments.


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