Re: USAGE: minimum number of vowels?

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 12:04:11 +0300, Isaac Penzev <isaacp@...> wrote:
> 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.
"None" because if the schwa vowel phone[me] is only being the realization
of /-/ (morpheme break), it is not, in a sense, actually being a _vowel_
phoneme, but more of a morphological process.  Whether to consider it a
vowel or not depends on how phonemic vs morphophonemic you want to be, I
suppose. (Possibly not everyone is comfortable with a phoneme like /-/.)


	*Muke!
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