Re: The Monovocalic PIE Myth (was Germans have no /w/, ...)

Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:

>Hallo!
>
>On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 02:28:11 -0700,
>Emily Zilch <emily0@...> wrote:
>
>
>
>>[...]
>>
>>Incidentally, issue of marking resonants as syllabic is particularly
>>cogent when dealing with certain languages of New Guinea whose surface
>>representations show, say, typical five- to seven-vowel systems but
>>whose underlying phonemes require only ONE vowel plus vocalic forms of,
>>say, [ y ] & [ w ].
>>
>>
>
>Why not call those phonemes /i/ and /u/ and say that they have
>non-syllabic as well as syllabic variants?
>
>
>
>>      For someone who struggled to understand the
>>theoretical system of PIE's earlier stages, it helped a LOT to see such
>>systems in RL (real life).
>>
>>Nota bene: for those who are not familiar, theories of earliest PIE
>>periods recommend a single vowel, usually marked as [ e ], with a
>>similar system of multiple surface realisations depending on stress
>>(i.e. later phonemicised into a two- or three-vowel system of [ e ] [ o
>>] ~ [ e ] [ o ] [ a ], depending on your theory) and later consonantal
>>loss (i.e. vowel insertion &/or lengthening phonemicised due to loss of
>>the "laryngeals" or [ H_1-3 ]), plus the syllabification of resonants.
>>Some of this has only become evident in the most recent work on *PIE of
>>the stage preceding the Hittite split and others are just plain theory,
>>but now I can at least *believe* it is possible since it demonstrably
>>happens in living (RL, no offense meant o fellow conlangers) languages.
>>
>>
>
>I don't think that PIE had only one vowel phoneme at any stage of
>its history.  At the time of the breakup, it had the usual five vowels
>/a e i o u/ plus syllabic allophones of /m n l r/.  And I think that
>pre-ablaut pre-PIE had three vowels /a i u/ of equal standing,
>which then all took part in ablaut.  There was a pitch accent
>on the penultimate syllable, and a strong and a weak grade
>of each vowel, of which the strong grade occured under the accent
>and the weak grade elsewhere.
>
>The development (according to my theory) was thus:
>
>strong grade
>
> *á > *e
> *í > *ei
> *ú > *ou > *eu
>
>weak grade
>
> *a > *@ > *o/0
> *i > *i
> *u > *u
>
>I.e., *i and *u did not change in weak grade and diphthongized
>in strong grade.  The strong-grade *á became *e and weak-grade *a
>was weakened to schwa, which deleted in contexts where the resulting
>consonant cluster was acceptable or a nearby sonorant could double
>as syllable nucleus.  This is the zero grade of the traditional
>ablaut theory.  Where deletion of schwa would have resulted in
>an inadmissible consonant cluster, it remained in place and later
>became *o, which was then paradigmatized as a separate o-grade.
>
>Pre-ablaut pre-PIE might have had the diphthongs *ai and *au
>in addition to *a, *i and *u.  Their strong grades would have
>merged with the strong grades of *i and *u, while the weak
>grades would have been *@i > *i and *@u > *u, thus the same as
>the weak grade of *i and *u.  Hence, the diphthongs merged with
>the high vowels in both grades.  How to tell whether the pre-ablaut
>form had *i or *ai (or, for that matter, *u or *au)?  Phonotactics.
>*CeiC is from *CiC, while *Cei is from *Cai.
>
>Well, that's what I think about it.  Comments welcome.
>
>
I find a two-vowel hypothesis more likely.  That is *a and *e(No doubt
not the actual pronounciations.  I suspect *e* is actually a schwa). *i
and *u, I believe, have evolved from *ej and *ew.  A two vowel system
seems to be consistent, vaguely, with the facts, and I agree that
high-grade *e>*e, low grade *e>*o or >0.  Incidentally, has anyone
noticed the huge parallels between Indo-European stops(of the Glottalic
theory) and those of Abkhaz. (Ejectives,  Labialised Consonants,
Palatalised Consonants, Plain Unvoiced, Plain Voiced).  If a two vowel
hypothesis was true, this would also suggest links, as the Abkahaz
closed vowel has huge allophony, but remains one vowel, just as the
hypothetical vowel I proposed did.