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Re: Illegal vowel combinations

From:Thomas R. Wier <artabanos@...>
Date:Tuesday, August 7, 2001, 5:08
Herman Miller wrote:

> On Mon, 6 Aug 2001 17:43:54 -0400, Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote: > > >J Y S Czhang wrote: > >> ROTFLMAO ... *gaspin' for air* > >> ::tries in vain to recall the names of some languages with even less vowels > >> than Spanish:: > > > >Quechua for one. Classical Arabic has just /a i u/ with length, > >Inukitut has /i a u/ with, I think, phonemic length, Early Uatakassí had > >just /i a u/, Classical Uatakassí added phonemic length to those.
Palaeo-Tlaspi had a three-vowel system: /i u a/. In Classical Tlaspi, each of those acquired a phonemically long counterpart. In Proto-Phaleran, mid vowels /e/ and /o/ were introduced, which are preserved in modern Phaleran. These last however, have no long counterparts. This is why there would be a problem with _eos_ as I said in my post on Phaleran ergativity: benefactive *-es lost the /e/, which lengthened the preceding vowel. This means that if there were long mid vowels, you could presumably have /eo:s/ (benefactive) and /eos/ (accusative) as a minimal pair. But this is not the case.
> A number of Australian languages have just /a i u/: Dyirbal and Yidiny come > to mind. Of my own languages, there's Chispa (with /a e i/) and Zirien > (with /a e i u/, but also having phonemic tone and length).
Abkhaz, a Caucasian language, has two phonemic vowels: /a/ and /@/. (There are other nonphonemic variants.) There is a rumored to be a language in Papua New Guinea that has no phonemic vowels, lots of consonants, with only epenthetic, nonphonemic schwas to break apart otherwise impossible consonant clusters. I suspect this less to do with any actual knowledge about PNG's languages and more to do with a belief that anything can happen in 'bongo-bongo land', as one of Margret Thatcher's indiscrete Foreign Ministers once put it. (Obviously, not *my* belief.) =================================== Thomas Wier | AIM: trwier "Aspidi men Saiôn tis agalletai, hên para thamnôi entos amômêton kallipon ouk ethelôn; autos d' exephugon thanatou telos: aspis ekeinê erretô; exautês ktêsomai ou kakiô" - Arkhilokhos

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Barry Garcia <barry_garcia@...>
Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>