Re: [tied] PIE Stop System

I mean what I wrote, and I recommend you to read it - it should be pretty
clear. Sanskrit /a/ comes from a variety of vowels that were merged into a
single phoneme. In the same way I assume that PIE /e/ was the result of an
earlier coalescence of a series of different vowel phonemes. Scholars with
a knowledge of Nostratic I can only dream of say they find a variety of
vowels in Uralic and Altaic matching the monotonous IE /e/. That looks
very much like the same story as in Sanskrit.

Jens

On Mon, 15 Sep 2003, P&G wrote:

> >> So you do find it possible that at a period there was only one
> phonemic
> >> vowel in PIE?
> >
> >Yes. The result would be as in Sanskrit where /a/ has precisely that
> >status.
>
> I am sure you don't mean this the way it looks.  Sanskrit /a/ cannot come
> from a single phonemic vowel in PIE.  We know that the vowel we
> reconstruct
> as PIE */e/ caused palatalisation in Sanskrit, while the vowel we
> reconstruct as PIE */o/ did not, and that the vowel we reconstruct as PIE
> */o/ is reflected as a long /a:/ in an open syllable, whereas the vowel
> we
> reconstruct as PIE */e/ is not.  This is an internal matter within
> Indo-Iranian, and cannot be taken to PIE.  Indo-Iranian inherited */e a
> o/
> precisely where Greek and other IE languages demand we reconstruct these
> different vowels.
>
> What you must have meant is that a period with only one phonemic vowel
> was
> followed by a later period of PIE where at least 5 vowels can be found.
>
> Peter
>
>
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