"syllabicity"

[Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen]

On Thu, 20 May 1999, Ralf-Stefan Georg wrote:

> In short, we should differentiate between two kinds of "monovocalic"
> systems: one, where, as in Sanskrit, only one phoneme has only vocalic
> allophones, but certain others have consonantic and vocalic ones, and a
> system, where only one phoneme *can* have one or several vocalic allophones.
> I still view the latter as typologically impossible, resp. unheard of,
> while I admit (of course) that the former description fits the Sanskrit
> data (and they won't go away by ignoring them, as Jens puts it rightly).

It's always nice to read well-argued words of agreement. I guess you are
supported by empirical typology in dismissing the latter type, but note
that the former (Sanskrit) type was dismissed by typology also, and that
has been found to be wrong. And - most importantly for the IE list - it
was the Sanskrit-type analysis that was proposed and rejected for PIE.
Thus, such rejection loses its cogency (but not its _potential_ adequacy).

Jens