Re: the sound [a]

Quoting Danny Wier <dawiertx@...>:

> From: "Benct Philip Jonsson" <bpj@...>
>
> > In more narrow notation it was probably /i & Q u/,
> > if that makes you any happier.  Moreover short /Q/
> > probably had an /A/ allophone.
It doesn't make me more inclined to accept a reconstructed protolanguage as
evidence for what can be found in natural languages, if that's what you mean.

It does sound like a more expected inventory, tho. It even includes a low(ish)
unrounded vowel! :)

> > Anyway the status of *a vs. *o and their relations
> > is problematic in PIE, which carries over into
> > Germanic, Baltic and Slavic.  I have a neat solution,
> > but won't divulge it at this point.
I'm reminded of a Swedish saying involving the letters 'a' and 'b' ...

> You're tempting me. I have my own theory on early PIE vocalism, but I won't
> go into it much (/i @ a u/ - oops).
>
> Another language I should've mentioned as lacking [a] is Uzbek. It has two
> low vowels, but they're /&/ and /Q/. Uzbek is essentially Turkish with the
> vowels of Farsi, by the way. Or did I say that already? I'd extend this to
> Turkic languages in general - Turkish has /E/ and /A/, for instance - if [A]
> and [a] weren't so close together.
Um, according to a Turkish girl I spoke with, Turkish have a /a/~/A/
distinction, or rather had - it's, according to her description, in the later
stages of collapse now. She's no linguist, but in the example words she used,
there certainly were some with [a] and some with [A].

                                                           Andreas