Re: Short and long vowels

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

> The three vowels would be the remains of pre-PIE **a, **i, **u,

kept

> distinct by the adjacent laryngeals, cf. the Hebrew hatephs

compared

> to schwa after other consonants.

The vowels do not always stand where the pre-PIE vowels were, so
that's not really very good.

>
> > The presumed furtive vowels do
> > not always stand where the full-grade vowel was. The schwas form
> > position in the Rigveda: savitar- is scanned savHitar-, duhitá:

is

> > scanned duhHita:. Thus one cannot just leave out the laryngeal

and

> > have only a prop-vowel.
>
> I don't think there is any problem with the maintenance of the
> laryngeal - the Greek development of *-.RH- (conventional
> reconstruction) > RV: supports the retention of a laryngeal. Nor

do I

> see that the metathesis of extra-short vowel and laryngeal to
> laryngeal and extra-short vowel is unreasonable. Slavic

matathesis of

> vowel plus liquid and the anaptyctic echo vowel between laryngeal

and

> consonant in Hebrew are partial parallels.

Yes, the Greek developments demand survival of the laryngeals into
the separate prehistory of Greek. But "metathesis" proves a rather
pitiful solution if one really tries to work with it rather than
immediately look the other way. Where did the middle vowel in
thugáte:r come from? From the root vowel of a one-time **dhawgH2- ??
How can there be roots of the shape *H2leH1-, *H2meH1-, *H2weH1-,
*H3elH1-, *H2enH1-, *H2werH1-, *H1elH2-, *H1eysH2-, *H1ewH2-,
*H2neH3-, *H2emH3-, *H2erH3-? How could the same root vowel trigger
different shwa colorations adjacent to already-neutralized
laryngeals? The matter has simply not been allotted the necessary
amount of reflection.

>
> > The
> > three Greek colours of syllabic resonants followed by laryngeals
> > present the same oppositions of coloration as the laryngeals had

when

> > they coloured adjacent /e/ in a prestage of PIE, That certainly
> > indicates that the laryngeals were still there in the relevant

post-

> > PIE linguistic stage when the specifically Greek sonorant
> colorations were effected.
>
> The sameness of the colour actually suggests that the effects

should

> be of the same age! By Patrick's hypothesis, we are simply seeing
> preservation of the same modification of the original timbres (/a

~ e

> ~ o/ rather than /a ~ i ~ u/), which is less remarkable.

Maybe it does at first glance suggest the same age, but a closer
look shows this to be impossible. And the "sameness" is only Greek
(and Phrygian). In other branches the laryngeal-triggered vowels
coalesced with each other or were lost. To an unbiased observer that
suggests that they were ultra-short, i.e. centralized and so
mutually quite similar, but still had some chromatic affinity to the
full-vowel triad e, a, o with which they merged in Greek. They must
have been an e-timbered, an a-timbered, and an o-timbered shwa,
respectively (like the shwas of German, American English, and
French, in that order). And the surviving consonantal laryngeals
must have preserved the same timbres so that new vowels that arose
secondarily could be tinged by them and, in Greek, merge with the
triple reflex of the shwas.

Jens