Re: [tied] Re: ka and k^a

Richard Wordingham wrote:

>>
>> 1) The Late Common Slavic vowel system had no a's. The British
>> English system has not either (neither front /æ/, central /^/ nor
>> back /O/
> are low
>> vowels, and we are not talking about long vowels like /a:/).
>
> British English is too vague a term here. There are plenty of
> dialects in which /æ/ is [a] - it's the typical Northern realisation
> and *now* apparently the best description of the RP system. On the
> other hand, a Birmingham (England, not Alabama) /æ/ is possibly as
> high as [E]. By back [O] I presume you mean the vowel of 'cot' - but
> that is low and not mid-low.

No, the vowel of 'cot' is not fully low, see
http://faculty.washington.edu/dillon/PhonResources/vowels.html
and compare BrEng [A.] and AmEng [A] (both are the vowels of 'cot') - the
former is higher. The American sound is lower (and unrounded) - if it is
lower, the British sound is not as low as possible.

>> 2) IE /e/ may have been /æ/ and IE /o/ may have been /A./ - so both
> may have
>> been low vowels. Such an assumption is not needed by me for
> anything, but if
>> you insist so much...
>
> You seem to be contradict point (1) above.

The problem is whether IE phoneme /a/ existed or not. I do not agree that it
_had to_ exist. So, there's no contradiction here because:
1) there _are_ systems without any (short) low vowels
2) the existence of /a/ in the PIE vowel system is unnecessary even if low
vowels are present in each existing vowel system (because /e/ and/or /o/ may
have been as low as /æ/ and /A./ in British English

Grzegorz J.



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