Re[2]: [tied] Re: PIE initial *a

At 7:25:25 AM on Wednesday, May 14, 2008, fournet.arnaud wrote:

> From: "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@...>

[...]

>> PIE *a, as I also have explained at least a dozen times,
>> results from a shortening of *a: due to the Law of
>> Phonological Entropy; and that pre-PIE unlengthened *a
>> was _not_ preserved.

> your own mother tongue refutes your Law of Entropy.

> Th stands for both tdh voiced and tth unvoiced.
> There is no minimal pair for this contrast between tdh and
> tth but tdh has not disappeared.

I'm assuming that by 'tdh' you mean [D], the initial
consonant of <this>, and that by 'tth' you mean [T], the
initial consonant of <thing>. <Thy> and <thigh> are a
minimal pair, and for many speakers (though not for me)
<ether> and <either> are another. But it's certainly true
that there are very few.

> The idea that a long a: could become short while there
> still are long vowels in the system does not make sense.

It may not make sense, but it can happen: OE <ha:ligdo:m>
became ME <halido:m> as part of a regular set of changes in
trisyllabic words. In fact, non-northern varieties of ME
eliminated /a:/ altogether, partly by shortening and partly
by a change /a:/ > /O:/, but it still had length contrasts.

Brian