--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:
> Likewise in Sanskrit, "e"
> is just that, despite the possibility that we can pretend it's "ai"
> instead for the purposes of the surface analysis to eke out a
monovocalic
> language.
How true is this? For starters, it's generally presented as [e:].
Secondly, in sandhi we have -a i- > -e- (though in Pali I think we
have -a i- > -i-, whence contrasts in names such as Indian
_Narendra_ but Thai _Narin_). What significance is to be attached
to the fact that, in Devanagari at least, <ai> (U+0948 at
http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0900.pdf) seems to be a doubled
<e> (U+0947) and <au> (U+094C) seems to be a partly doubled <o>
(U+094B)?
I don't think the issue of whether /i/ and /y/ are different is
relevant to this question, and we've already discussed the way
labels detach from concepts in Glen's memory. (All memories?)
Richard.