Re: 'Vocalic Theory'

----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2008 10:36 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] RE: 'Vocalic Theory'


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

<snip>

Note that they all allowed short vowels to be umlauted.

***

Who is 'they all'? There is no obvious antecedent.

Are you saying that Dutch allows short vowels but not long vowels to undergo
umlaut?

***

There is one example where laryngeal colouring fully affected short
vowels but only partially long vowels - lamedh guttural stems in
Classical Hebrew. Treating lenition as merely allophonic, we can compare:

1) Segholates: _mélek_ 'king' v. _mélaH_ 'salt'
2) Jussive of hiph`il: _yikbe:d_ 'let him honour' v. _yis^laH_
'let him send'

v.

3) Hiph`il: _hikbi:d_ 'honour' v. _his^li:aH_ 'send'

(On a simple view, there is a race condition between lengthening of
final vowels in stressed closed syllables i > e: and of colouring i > a.)

Long vowels are 'broken' rather than coloured, but generally such
breaking can be 'smoothed' away. Had this happened in Hebrew, we
would have had laryngeal colouring of short vowels but no effect on
long vowels. As it is, we get the breaking effectively known as
furtive pathah rather than full colouring.

Is it possible to have a phonemic analysis where furtive pathah is
purely an allophonic effect? If so, we could claim an even better
analogy to PIE.

Richard.

***

I do not know enough about Hebrew to really grasp your point.



Patrick

***