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Re: USAGE: minimum number of vowels?

From:Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Date:Friday, July 30, 2004, 4:57
From:    Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>
> Thomas R. Wier wrote: > > > Why none? The opposition still may exist as /vowel/ :: /no vowel/. Some > > > people think PIE worked this way. > > > > Granted, but the question was how many contrasts were in the set > > [vowel phoneme]. The answer to that was "none", because there is > > no nonpredictable factor within that set to distinguish one from > > another. > > What about [+syllabic]?
Ah, but that is still not salient in the set [vowel phoneme]; all members of the set have this feature. Indeed, it's what distinguishes that set from its superset [phoneme]. ========================================================================= Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally, Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of 1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter. Chicago, IL 60637