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Re: Illegal vowel combinations

From:Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Tuesday, August 7, 2001, 17:49
At 12:15 am -0500 7/8/01, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
>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. >
[snip]
>> 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,
...and according to some theorists ProtoIndoEuropean also had no phonemic vowels. Yep, examples of three-vowel languages are common enough. I can add to the languages already mentioned: Aranda (another Australian language) and Amuesha (a language of the equitorial Andes) - and I have no doubt that there are quite a few others no one has mentioned. Some of the Caucasian languages have, indeed, been analyzed as having one or two phonemic vowels but, I believe, these analyses are not universally accepted and there is argument about the how much phonetic contrasts are due to the consonant system; and this is certainly so of PIE and, presumably, of the Papua New Guinea language mentioned above. But, leaving aside the controversial cases, three-vowel languages are well-attested; less common are four-vowel languages, but they do occur, e.g. Rukai (an Austronesian language): /i/ /1/ /u/ /a/; Klamath ( a ): /i/ /e/ /a/ /o/. According to some theorists Proto-Germanic also had a four-vowel system. One doesn't have to try very hard - there are languages enough with fewer vowels than Spanish. Ray. BTW - I'm a bit mistified by the subject heading (I missed the beginning of the thread). How can any vowel combination be _illegal_? What or whose law do I break if I use such a combination? Will I be arrested & prosecuted? It reminds me of those stupid messages "illegal operation" mesaages I get whenever I have the misfortune to have to use Windows :) ========================================= A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language. [J.G. Hamann 1760] =========================================

Replies

Muke Tever <alrivera@...>
Thomas R. Wier <artabanos@...>