[tied] Re: Short and long vowels

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Brophey" <TBrophey@...> wrote:

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

> It doesn't sound like a good idea to me. The intent is to support
> Patrick's non-coloring laryngeal hypothesis, right?
> * It duplicates notation: Your *E = *&1, *A = *&2, *O = *&3

Are these *E, *A, *O vovalic? I had thought they were neutral.
Also, they're not used on Cybalist.

> * Your *A collides with Patrick's *A for the Ablaut vowel.

An idiosyncratic notation.

> * Patrick's zero-grade (as I understand it) is full short.

I think this is muddle - I hope notational. However, it is
unsatisfactory to dismiss Patrick's idea simply because he cannot
express it and expand on it well. Such a description clearly loses
the distinction between normal and zero grade, which Patrick should
wish to make. There are problems with expressing it - precise
phonetic details are not knowable, but it is not necessarily clear
when the differences became phonemic. The problem that common
developments may be misattributed to a common ancestor may be very
real here. I would rather not have to resort to the likes of '_X'
for extra-short, or breach the forum recommendations by going beyond
Latin-1.

> > Talking of notation, we normally write the laryngeals h1, h2, h3
> here
> > rather than H1, H2, H3 to avoid accidental confusion with
> aspiration.
>
> I second Pavel A. da Mek's comments on this (in post 39370).

I was describing practice here, where aspiration is normally
written 'H' rather than 'h', even in Greek.

Richard.