Re: Re[12]: [tied] Re: PIE initial *a

At 2:57:41 PM on Saturday, May 17, 2008, Andrew Jarrette
wrote:

> Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@... ca> wrote:

>> Not to mention, in Southwest and Midland dialects,

>> y: y
>> ø: ø
>> œ: œ
-------------

If you reexamine my postings, nowhere did I posit a short phoneme /œ/.  I only posited short and long /y/ and /ø/ (at the same heights as short and long /i/ and /e/) plus a possible long-only /œ:/ (at the same height as /E:/ and /O:/).  The latter, if it did exist,  would have been the outcome of /ø/ after the operation of  OSL (like similar /E:/ and /O:/ from /e/ and /o/ with OSL) as I proposed in my last post.  Of course, it is probable that short /e/ /o/ and /ø/ were actually realized as [E], [O], [œ], so after OSL went through one could represent the SW ME vowel system as:

/i/ /i:/      /y/ /y:/      /u/ /u:/
/e:/             /ø:/                /o:/
/E/ /E:/   /œ/ /œ:/   /O/ /O:/
                      /a/ /a:/

again assuming that /œ:/ existed, which it may not have.

Not the East Midlands: it went with the North and had the
unrounded vowels. And only two sets, I think, one high and
one mid. Oversimplifying a bit:

North & SW &
OE East Midl. SW Midl. SE
------------ --------- --------
y: i: y: e:
y i y e
e:o e: ø: e:
eo e ø e
__________

I find your "oversimplification" a bit difficult to read.  It suggests that the North had rounded front vowels in ME ("North & SW", placed first in the row), if the last three in each row are OE East Midl. followed by SW Midl. followed by SE; if the first in each row is North, the second SW, then it suggests that North had rounded front vowels, SW had unrounded front vowels, and then I can't make sense of the conglomeration "& OE East Midl. SW Midl. SE" especially since there are only two more in each row of vowels, not three as the title suggests.  Perhaps you could oversimplify your oversimplification.

Andrew