Re: USAGE: minimum number of vowels?

From:    Isaac Penzev <isaacp@...>
> Thomas R. Wier jazdy:
> > Actually, it might even be more enticing than just that.  There are
> > some analyses out there that the schwa vowel phoneme exists only for
> > morpheme juncture, and thus is itself predictable.  This leaves the
> > language just one vowel phoneme, and thus none, since there is
> > no phonological contrast of any kind to define the phoneme by.
>
> 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.  You are of course correct that in the larger set of
[phonemes] in such a language, there would have to be one phoneme
for all vowels.

 =========================================================================
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

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