From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 22697
Date: 2003-06-05
----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegård Rasmussen
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 3:54 PM
Subject: [tied] IE vowels
> ... On its way through these stages the language will have had /a, i, u/
(the latter two of the same status as in Sanskrit, so that's appparently
fine). The next stage will then have /a, e, o, i, u/. Whether we are
technically really speaking of *phonemes* in any strict sense of the term
(which has many varieties) is immaterial, for whole-world typology is not
all that sophisticated anyway. Therefore, by the standards with which it can
be measured, (pre-)PIE is typologically sound in all stages of its
development.
Yes, details (especially those concerning the intermediate stages) remain to
be clarified, but that's the sort of thing I had in mind. I think we're
speaking the same language now :-)
Piotr