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

----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 1:34 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Abstractness (Was Re: [j] v. [i])



>> [Piotr:] The comparative evidence points to [e] as the value of PIE *e.
If the pre-PIE system was triangular, then the choice of *e for the low
vowel expected in such a system is not particularly felicitous. I'd even
describe it as misleading.

> [Jens:] On that basis I find we'd better describe typology as misleading.
The all-important low vowels did exist in PIE, but they had a relatively
marginal status. Is that unimportant to typology? If so, it makes typology
unimportant.

You can't expect the typology of vowel inventories to predict the
morphological functions of vowels. It only tells you what kind of "geometry"
can be expected in a system with three, four, five, six, etc., vowels. The
"marginal status" of PIE *a was not a matter of frequency (it wasn't all
that rare) but of the fact that it was outside the normal ablaut
alternations -- but that's an extraphonological thing, a legacy of the
pre-PIE system.

A phonologically plausible scenario could be as follows: an original
(pre-PIE) triangular inventory, /i, a, u/, developed into a square
inventory, /i, E, O, u/ (where /E/ and /O/ stand for low vowels, perhaps
like those in British English <pat> and <pot>). /E/ and /O/ were related
morphophonologically via qualitative ablaut rules, reflecting the fact that
they had once been variants of the same phoneme. Then, /E/ developed a very
low and retracted allophone ([a]) in "colouring" environments (always when
next to *h2, at least occasionally next to *k, *g, *gH, and perhaps also in
some other environments). The allophone eventually developed into phonemic
/a/, and the system evolved into /i, e, a, o, u/, optimising the
distribution of the five phonemes in the vowel space. /a/ was the youngest
of the five, and did not have an important role to play in PIE morphology
(as opposed to some branch-specific morphologies). However, its role as a
slot-filler in the vowel inventory can't be ignored.

Piotr