Re: Indo-European question

Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
>
> > Date:         Mon, 18 Jun 2001 15:35:37 -0500
> > From: Eric Christopherson <rakko@...>
>
> > On Mon, Jun 18, 2001 at 09:47:37AM -0000, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
> > > Each type is then divided by the final conoid in the stem, where
> > > stops, laryngeals, and semivowels all give different developments.
>
> > What's a conoid? (consonant-oid?)
>
>It's a mipsling for contoid:
>
>     A consonant defined phonetically, by the way it is produced, as
>     distinguished from a consonant in a phonological sense, defined by
>     its role in the structure of words and syllables. Thus a syllabic
>     nasal, as in the second syllable of button ['b^tn], is a contoid
>     even if, in phonology, it were treated as vocalic.
>
>     Cf. vocoid: both terms were introduced by Pike in the 1940s.
>
>     The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics, © Oxford University
>     Press 1997
>
>And it turns out that the term doesn't quite mean what I thought,
>either: semivowels are probably vocoids.
I've got a book that defines vocoids as vowels and semivowels, while
contoids are everything else. It is, however, quite clearly not aiming for
scientifically exact definitions - it's rather trying to give the layman a
clue so he can continue.

                                                   Andreas
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