"syllabicity"

[Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen]

On Wed, 26 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

[... (Discussing IE possible monovocalism:)]

> I [...] used *t(V) to attempt to indicate that a -*t was
> the result of a stress-accent-motivated reduction from an earlier -*tV
> while *tV showed the morpheme in its fuller form under the condition of
> stress-accentuation.

> How would you prefer to indicate a single morpheme, *tV, that has two
> realizations: unstressed -*t and stressed -*tV?

You are at the core of the matter now: You are talking morphophonemics,
not phonemics, but using a notation that brings in morphological
knowledge. And, while it could be wise to turn the debate to this
point, that was not the issue to begin with. Of course there is a lot more
predictability in wordforms if you are allowed to quote them in a shape
that allows you to make predictions about their alternations. That in fact
is why I have been so much occupied with IE morphophonemics (of course you
may not know that, but I have, and it pays off).

Jens