From: "dirk elzinga" <dirk.elzinga@...>
> Okay; this makes sense now. Except for this:
>
> > ** [e:] should actually not under normal circumstances appear as a
phoneme
> > in native words. What's more, the sound spelled by this letter might
have
> > always been [i:] and never pronounced as [e:] at all (in which case I
should
> > throw out the e: > e rule). I'll have to look into it.
>
> When I trace the changes you mention, you have a merger of long
> non-low front vowels ([i:, e:]) to [i:]. But later in the
> changes to the stressed set, you still have [e:]. Did it change
> to [i:] or not?
Original /e:/ changed to [i:], yes.
[e:] would be an allophone of /e/ in stressed open syllables (after the [e:]
> [i:] change and the dephonemicization of length). I am not, however,
entirely sure that any such /e/ would exist without a stress change
somewhere. (There are a couple of minor rules that create /e/. There would
also, I'm sure, be suitable /e/ in borrowings.)
[I sometimes tend to have more rules than I need, given that I usually make
sound changes before I have much vocabulary to build them on. And accidents
do happen... Hmmk.]
*Muke!