Re: Indo-Iranian Vowel Collapse (was: IIr 2nd Palatalisation)

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

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jens Elmegård Rasmussen

<elme@...>

> wrote:
>
> > For
> > Hittite, Melchert has made a strong case for the separation

of /a/

> > and /o/ by their different ability to undergo lengthening: /a/

is

> > lengthened under the accent, but only in an open syllable, while
> > accented /o/ is lengthened in both open and closed syllables.

And

> > Brugmann's Law does not apply to the reflex of *a in Indo-

Iranian.

>
> My feeling is that there was something about PIE that made the

merger

> of /a/ and /o/ highly likely, but not certain. Different dialects
> therefore show different outcomes and different degrees of

merger.

> It reminds me of NW Germanic umlaut, which is by no means uniform
> (not even Old English umlaut is!) and the varying development of
> short stressed Latin /e/ to /ie/ in daughter languages.
>
> Is there any respectable way of describing such tendencies?

Torsten

> would probably suggest class differences (as in his Nordwestblock
> monologues), or high v. low registers, but I'm not sure that they
> would work.
>
> Richard.
>

Actually Torsten, in one of his sweeping, ill-informed proposals has
suggested that all /a/'s occur in loans, since if the PIE ablaut
vowel was pre-PIE /a/ there would have been no legitimate ancestor
for PIE /a/.

For some reason I'm the Nordwestblok peoples' only champion in
dented armor. Sometimes you don't know how you'll miss someone until
they're gone.


Torsten