Lehmann's Syllabicity

[Patrick C. Ryan]

Dear Leo and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Leo A. Connolly" <connolly at memphis.edu>
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2001 10:48 PM

> Pat Ryan wrote:

>> There are a number of IEists who do not subscribe to Lehmann's theory of
>> "syllabicity",

> I don't, of course, but I think we've been through that already.

>> which he originated to explain the unusual fact that most IE roots display a
>> front-back vowel (also, potentially no vowel) contrast, which indicates
>> morphosemantic differences only --- not lexicosemantic ones.

>> Unusual because in the great majority of languages around the world, varying
>> root-vowels indicate lexical rather than morphological differences (Semitic
>> sharing this peculiarity though perhaps not its parent PAA).

> .......

>> Let us assume, for the purposes of this discussion, that some unspecified
>> language earlier than but ancestral to IE had a structure in which
>> differences of vowel-quality signaled lexical differences: *men- /= *man-
>> /= *mon-.  This is certainly justifiable on typological grounds.

> I have absolutely no evidence for what I'm about to say, so please: it is
> mere speculation -- Gedankenlinguistik, wenn man's so nennen will.  It is the
> merest possibility and for that reason not worth flaming in a refutation.

[PCR]

I will try never to flame you, Leo.

> 1.  The proposed men- *man- *mon- opposition is somewhat weird in that
> it has three non-high vowels: where are *min- and *mun-?

> 2.  This suggests that an original distinction was restructured when /e/
> and /o/ were used to signal certain morphological categories.  They
> could replace each other as required.  They could also be added to /i/
> and /u/, producing the diphthongal ablaut series we know and love.

> 3.  It is well known that [a] is at least extremely rare in indisputably
> IE roots, except in proximity to an "a-coloring laryngeal".  There has
> recently been a discussion on this list proposing that non-laryngeal [a]
> in Northern European forms means that these are not PIE in origin.  This
> could mean either that (a) an earlier
> *man- merged with something else (*men- and/or *mon-) in most
> environments, or (b) that there was no earlier /man-/.  Since
> four-vowel, a-less systems exist, neither possibility seems better than
> the other.

>>  First, I would like to know how list-members believe these lexical
>>  differences were maintained in IE.

> My speculations suggest that many such lexical differences were
> precisely *not* maintanied.  They entail that the root types /men-/ and
> /mon-/ (and /man-/, if it existed), merged as what we might call /men-/
> or even /mVn-/.  And if the analysis was /mVn-/ (/V/ a non-high vowel
> with features to be added by morphology), extension of the morphological
> e:o ablaut to stems with original /i u/ would be readily understandable.

[PCR]

Why do you think that might be preferable to simply regarding /i, u/ as
allophones of /y, w/?

> Two final comments:

> 1.  These speculations apply independent of whether PIE was a descendant
> of Proto-Nostratic or even Proto-World.  They are triggered by internal
> IED phenomena.

> 2.  Again, they are *SPECULATIONS*.  Please don't pounce too hard on
> such a tempting target.

[PCR]

Never.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim
meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)