Re: THEORY: A possible Proto-World phonology
| From: | BP Jonsson <bpj@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, June 29, 2000, 19:53 |
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At 20:34 29.6.2000 +0200, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
>How does Lehmann argue that his model is better than one that says
>
> The language probably had 3 to 10 different vowel phonemes,
> like languages usualy do --- but the data do not allow us to
> tell them apart, so we just write **@ for all of them.
Oddly, that was exactly how I understood it when I first read about it!
BTW it has occurred to me that qualitative ablaut may originally have been
a difference in pitch, the lower F0 getting reinterpreted/misperceived as
having lower formants overall.
>7000 years is a long time --- for all we know the
>protolanguage might have had a phonology like Hawai'ian 5-7000 years
>ago, when the link to PIE would have existed.
I can only agree.
/BP
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melroch@mail.com
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