Jens to Richard:
> What is your criterion here? Is there much point in discussing
> whether the partition between the two major syllabic peaks
> constituted by the vowels of <sitting> is before the consonant,
> after the consonant or somehere inside it? Is there really a
> physical difference?
Hey, lay off Richard, you big meanie :)
At least he seems to understand me. Yes, there is a difference.
The difference can be length, tenseness, etc. And that can make a
difference in the evolution of the same vowel in an open syllable
versus a closed one.
I pronounce the /A/ in "happy" shorter, as if it were in a closed
syllable... cuz it _is_. In contrast when I pronounce the first /A/
of "Canada", it's slightly longer because I recognize that it's in an
open syllable /'kA.n&.da/. I'm sure the length contrast here is barely
perceptible, a contrast of half-length, but it's still significant.
Richard:
> However, if *pedos was [pet:ás], as Glen believes, perhaps the
> first syllable was closed!
Yes, I believe the first syllable was closed in *pedos. Syllabicized
as */ped.os/. Thank you for understanding.
Jens to Richard:
> He did not say anything about a special treatment of b, d, g (his
> p:, t:, k:, I guess) in this respect.
I mentioned it a long time ago. If you had paid a little attention, Jens,
you'd know that I follow a modified version of Glottalic Theory. While
most others of this camp think that IE itself had glottal stops, I think
that a _pre-stage_ of IE had glottal stops (namely Proto-Steppe). I've
been greatly influenced by Allan Bomhard's ideas on Nostratic and IE who
also ascribes to this theory, but I can't believe that Reconstructed IE
had glottal stops while I must accept that it once did in the past
because of some scrumptious typological arguements that don't go away.
So, I've come to the conclusion that IE's voiced stops were probably
half-voiced while the "voiced aspirates" were fully voiced as they are
in French. It's a simple matter of voicing-onset.
However, in MIE, I write *t: for later *d simply because I feel that
at this stage, these stops were completely voiceless but still contrasted
somehow with voiceless plain *t and voiced *d (> *dH).
This shouldn't be a terrible controversy but as usual Jens wants to
make a crater out of a gopher hole.
Jens:
> What we can say about *pedós in this respect is that the /e/ is short
> and followed by a single consonant plus a vowel. Within the limited
> knowledge at our disposal that makes the first syllable open; otherwise
> the distinction has no meaning that I can see.
I don't think our knowledge is so limited.
"Laryngeals and Vedic metre"
Jost Gippert (Universität Frankfurt)
http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/personal/jg/pdf/jg1996k.pdf
= gLeN