"syllabicity"

Rich Alderson alderson at netcom.com
Tue May 18 22:14:23 UTC 1999


On 1 May 1999, "Patrick C. Ryan" <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>Dear Jens and IEists:

> ----- Original Message -----
>From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk
>Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 1999 6:36 PM

>> 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.

>Unless it contrasts with another vowel, which produces a *semantic*
>difference, I believe it is correct to say that the phone is not phonemic.

Phonemic vowels are not defined only in contrast to other phonemic vowels, but
in contract to non-vowels as well.  Thus, only if there were no obstruents of
any kind in a language might one be entitled to argue that a vowel was not
phonemic (but one might also wish to deny the status of language to such an
object of wonder).

Further, your definition of "semantic" is sorely lacking if it excludes the
meanings associated with so-called "grammatical morphemes", a seemingly _ad
hoc_ definition constructed only to allow you to deny the phonemic status of
vowels you would like to ignore.

>> I think he violates an even more fundamental rule: If a segment is opposed
>> to zero, it exists!

>Differo, ergo sum.

>But, Lehmann would accord segmenticity to syllabicity, I am relatively
>certain.

But he explicitly denies it!

>> 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!

>With the best attempt to see this, I confess I cannot.  The difference
>between *-t and -*te is simply explained by paying attention to the
>stress-accentuation: *"-t(i) and *-"te.

The difference between *-t and *-te is best explained by the fact that they are
two different lexical items, morphemes meaning "3rd singular" and "2nd plural"
respectively.  Anything else does violence to any reasonable reconstruction of
PIE based on the actual data.

								Rich Alderson



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