"syllabicity"

[Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen]

On Tue, 27 Apr 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

[...]

> Rich continues:

>> Thus, Lehmann violates a major principle when he asserts that any stage of
>> Indo-European lacked a phonemic vowel:  If a phone is present in a language,
>> it has a psychological status in the lexicon, and while it may alternate
>> with other sounds in the language because of morphological rules or
>> unconstrained processes, it cannot be denied phonemic status.

I think he violates an even more fundamental rule: If a segment is opposed
to zero, it exists! Thus, since even an extremist monovocalic IE phonology
would oppose a 3sg in *-t to a 2pl in *-te, it must have a phoneme /e/.
This of course does not detract from the stimulating effect of the book -
just look at us!

[... PCR:]
> But, why all the fuss about monosyllabicity when Sanskrit provides us with
> the next logical outcome of a language that, at an earlier stage, was
> monovocalic (at least, phonemically).

I believe this is right even synchronically, barring words of marginal
phonological integration: In Sanskrit,
	[a:] is identical with /a/ +/a/
	[i] is a realization of /y/
	[u] is a realization of /v/
	[i:] is identical with [i] + [i], thus a realization of /yy/
	[u:] is identical with [u] + [u], thus a realization of /vv/
	[r.] is a realization of /r/
	[r.:] is identical with [r.] + [r.], thus a realization of /rr/
	[l.] is a realization of /l/
	[e:] is a realization of /ay/
	[o:] is a realization of /av/
	[a:u] is a realization of /aav/
	[a:i] is a realization of /aay/

Thus, in Sanskrit, short /a/ is the only true vowel demanded to allow
an unambiguous notation of all (normal) words. This is a one-vowel system
of the kind dismissed as a typological impossibility for PIE. - I rush to
add that the acceptability of this analysis for Sanskrit does not make it
correct for PIE which, for completely independent reasons, appears to need
at least the vowels /a, e, o/ on the phonemic level - and even long /a:,
e:, o:/ and underlying /i, u/ (opposed to /y, w/!) on an abstract
morphophonemic level.

In Sanskrit, as in PIE, the rules stipulating a given sonant/semivowel to
appear syllabic or nonsyllabic are relatively clear. Such an element is
nonsyllabic when contiguous with a vowel, otherwise it is syllabic. Only
Sievers and a touch of analogy compromise predictability.

Jens