Re: The meaning of life: PIE. *gWiH3w-

----- Original Message -----
From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2008 12:04 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: The meaning of life: PIE. *gWiH3w-


> On 2008-02-11 17:35, Patrick Ryan wrote:

<snip>

> I believe there is sufficient evidence to reconstruct PIE
> *a as an independent phoneme (there is also a minor pattern of vowel
> alternations where the strong grade *a: corresponds to the weak grade
> *a). At the "systematic phonological" level **e in the vicinity of *h2
> fell together with *a, and since this *a was a separate phoneme, the
> change **eh2 > *ah2 (and *h2e > *h2a) was phonemic and not merely
> allophonic.
>
> Piotr

***

Well, I am pretty sure you would not want to go as far as I would, but I
believe _all_ PIE *a is a weak grade of *a: (from either consonantal
aspiration or adjacency to a 'laryngeal' *H) or has just been shortened from
*a: for lack of a contrasting word of the same consonantal configuration
with *a.

It seems to be a rule of historical language development that any
phonological feature which is not contrastively functional will tend to
disappear.

This, if course, brings up the question of how one would prefer to notate
the sequence *oH2 where we expect an *o-quality in the absence of the
'laryngeal'; I guess I would prefer *oH2 but I assume you would want *aH2?


Patrick