Miguel:
>That's what I said. The vowel that was rounded by *h3 is etymologically
>short (original *o itself is not affected by laryngeals), so we don't
>expect it to give /a:/ in Indo-Iranian. The *o in *d�ru(r), *g^�nu(r)
>comes from pre-PIE **a:
But again, I don't see the necessity of this idea. The simple reason why
*h3 doesn't affect *o is that *h3 is a labialized aspirate [hW]. Since *o
is round already, labiality cannot affect an already labial vowel. From
all indications *o was the _same_ length as *e in IE, otherwise we
wouldn't have reconstructed it as such for so many decades. From
the evidence, it's clear you are relying on the _minor_ evidence to
support your fantastical idea, when the _overall_, multi-branch
evidence clearly shows that *o is phonemically short.
>(by the extremely common development /a:/ > /o:/)
The abundance of such changes in world languages means
nothing if the necessity of a "longer" *o is not borne from the
full analysis of the evidence in IE itself.
First internal evidence, THEN external justification.
= gLeN
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