Re: [tied] -osyo 4 (was: Nominative Loss. A strengthened theory?)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Wordingham" <richard.wordingham@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 10:22 AM
Subject: [tied] -osyo 4 (was: Nominative Loss. A strengthened theory?)


> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:

> > And perhaps now that Piotr has also stated that double-long vowels
> > are exceedingly rare, we might all finally realize what I already
> > know -- that Jens' use of double-long vowels in both IE and now
> > Proto-Slavic shows how bizarre his tactic for problem solving
> really
> > is and grossly unbalances the actual statistics if he were correct.
> > I've stated this rarity of double-long vowels for some time but
> > because I'm the 'crazy' member of the Forum who is far too
> delighted
> > with such a glorious title to develop a more productive self-image
> > for myself, no one has heeded my offerings of common sense. Oh
> well.
>
> Are double long vowels in Estonian a local development? My English
> idiolect seems to have three vowel lengths - the vowels in _beat_
> and _bid_ seem to be the same length! (These words are also
> distinguished by vowel quality and voicing of the final consonant.)
> Rare, but not impossible.

For the record, I said they were _fairly_ rare, not _extremely_ rare. To be
sure, Ladefoged and Maddieson mention only Mixe and Yavapai as languages
with lexically relevant overlong three-way length distinctions. They thus
ignore (unjustifiably, IMO) the Low Saxon/Limburgish data I mentioned here
yesterday, which may mean that they have overlooked other such cases as
well. As for Estonian (and some of its Finnic-Saami cousins), overlength is
more a matter of relative syllable quantity within a word than a contrast
existing in the lexical representation. But then, what has been claimed here
for PIE was merely _derived_ overlength, originally in complementary
distribution with ordinary length plus a sonorant. Once it had become
phonologised in the individual IE lineages (through the generalisation of
sandhi variants), the contrast between overlength and ordinary length was
either abandoned or converted into a qualitative contrast. That kind of
thing is not bizarre at all.

Piotr