[gothic-l] problems with evolution of Gothic vowel system

[jdm314 at AOL.COM]

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Thatiy Manala:

<<On Fri, 1 Sep 2000 jdm314 at aol.com wrote:
> example, is the Sanskrit word as'va somehow closer to proto-indo-european
> *ek'wos than, say, Latin equus?

Sanskrit tends to put a's all over the place. >>

Yes, and by doing so they lost a lot of the original Proto-Indo-European
vowel system.


<<> Let's see, do you mean eh, e, and ae? I should mention that Latin
technically
> has TWO e's, namely the long and the short.

The short Latin e is not so significative as the short German e.
And probably, Latin short e was a matter of aesthetics. We, Spaniards,
have only one foneme (e) but the three sounds (long, short and open)
for that e, like in "preferemente". The question is that is not
significative for us! We interpolate. For some reason, Germanic
people started to pronounce more tightly and get different fonemes
for the same letter (grapheme) : e >>

The Latin long vs. short e distinction is significant though, e.g. Bru:te "Oh
Brutus!" vs. bru:te: "in a brutish manner," venit "he comes" vs. ve:nit "he
has come." Long and short e also have a different outcome in Spanish, e.g.
veni: "Come!" > "ven", but ve:ni: "I have come" > "vine." I don't know German
well enough to discuss how contrastive the long and short vowels are in that
language, but my impression was that they were less so than in Latin. Or
perhaps you are discussing quality vs. quantity? That is, the distinction
between open and closed e vs. the distinction between a literally long and
literally short e.



<<>
> herdijaz is closer to hrdijaz that hairdeis. Consider vocalic
>
> as that the ratio vowel/consonants tends to get higher. >>
>
> Are you sure? Keep in mind that the soudn represented by <ai> in Gothic is
> not the same as, say, the sound represented by <ai> in Spanish!

Well, are you using quasi-phonetic notation? Spanish is quasi-phonetic.
It'd be nuts to write hairdeis following English rules. >>

The spelling here is the one used by Bishop Ulphilas himself, which is to say
that used in the Gothic alphabet. By the time Gothic was written down, the
Greeks (from whom the Goths got their writing system) were pronouncing <ai>
as an open e, so the Goths took advantage of this fact when they wrote their
language, using a letter that looks like our "E" for a long closed e, but
using ai for a short open e (and possibly a long one too, though this may
have been a diphthong, as in the spanish spelling)... the situation is the
same for <au>
    If you think about it, this is the same reason English and French (and
Modern Greek for that matter) use <ai> for a simple e-ish sound: that
diphthong has a tendency to smooth into an e of some sort. Compare how Latin
ae merged in with short e.



<< >     Proto-Indo-European had only one sibilant... only one fricative
really,
> and that was s...

Ok, that's not right, I can't agree. No derived Indo-european
language has such a simple scheme. For such strong assert you
need a good couple of books to convince me. >>

Well, it sure seems like it ain't natural for a language to have a ton of
stops and only one fricative, but it's so. And there ARE derived
Indo-European languages with just one fricative, take Classical Greek for an
example. The Modern Greek fricatives come from the Ancient aspirated and
voiced stops.
    If you want a book, take your pick. Any book on Proto-Indo-European
within the last 50 years will do really.... I don't know what's out there in
Spanish, but in English you might try Andrew Sihler's "A New Comparative
Grammar of Greek and Latin"... or even just the apendices of the American
Heritage Dictionary, if your interest is more superficial (but it sounds like
your interest is more than that)



<< > THOSE were. Perhaps you're thinking of Indo-Iranian?

Indo-Iranian = Indo-arian = Indo-european >>

Nope!

    Indo-Germanic = Indo-European, the language family which includes Greek,
Latin, Germanic, Indic, Iranian, Slavic, Baltic, Tocharian, Albanian, etc.
etc.
    Indo-Aryan = Indo-Iranian, the language family which includes Sanskrit,
Pali, Hindi, Nepali, Old Persian, Avestan, Pahlavi, Farsi, Pashto etc.

Indo-Iranian/Indo-Aryan is a SUB-FAMILY of Indo-European.




Adam Iustina Khshayathiya Vazrka Kshayathiya Kshayathiyaanam Khsayathiya

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