Re: the sound [a]

Andreas Johansson wrote:
> Actual judgment would, of course, be postponed till having seen some real
> phonetic data on the language - if it turns out that /e/ and /o/ simply never
> have high allophones ever, well, typology be damned. But languages with small
> vocalic sets often allow their vowel phonemes to cover alot of space in the ol'
> tetragon, and if [i] and [u] are valid realizations of /e/ and /o/, there would
> seem to be little reason not to reanalyze them as /i/ and /u/.
What if [i] and [u] are only used in specific, relatively uncommon,
situations, say, when word-final?  Such that occurrences of [e] might
outnumber [i] by, say, 3:1?  Wouldn't it be more sensible to call it by
the more common allophone, in this case, /e/?

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