Re: The Monovocalic PIE Myth (was Germans have no /w/, ...)
| From: | Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, June 8, 2004, 22:11 |
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Hallo!
On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 17:39:29 -0400,
Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:
> This matter is being discussed on Cybalist at the moment!! For IE it seems
> to require a big stretch. But one writer has posted a very convincing
> argument for Sanskrit as monovocalic. See msg. 33008 in the yahoogroup
> archive for a text in the 1-vowel system.
Well, it is a matter of definition whether, in a language like Sanskrit
or Latin, one defines [i] and [u] as syllabic allophones of /j/ and /w/,
or conversely [j] and [w] as non-syllabic allophones of /i/ and /u/.
I would prefer the latter alternative and count such phonemes as vowels.
At any rate, the syllable nuclei [a], [i] and [u] all occur in Sanskrit,
together with a few others.
Greetings,
Jörg.
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