"syllabicity"

[Patrick C. Ryan]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Leo and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Sent: Monday, May 10, 1999 12:16 PM

> Pat Ryan wrote in response to the following:

>>>>> 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.

> More precisely, we must say that it *could indicate* a semantic difference.
> In English, /i:/ and /ai/ are phonemically distinct, even though _either_
> means the same no matter how it is pronounced in that word.  Nor do they
> indicate a semantic difference in the context /l_t/, there being no word
> *_leet_ to contrast with _light_.  It's the semantic difference between
> _meet_ and _might_ that shows that /i:/ and /ai/ are phonemically distinct;
> we cannot say that phonemes ever *produce* a semantic difference.

Well, there is no set of relationships in IE wherein *CeC is semantically
different from *Ce{sub}C. That, IMHO, demonstrates conclusively that
[e/e{sub}] is not phonemic. As for [e:], I do not believe it is an allophone
but rather the product of *He/e{sub}.

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

> He doesn't.  For his "pre-stress" stage, he specifically posits "A
> non-segmental phoneme /^/, syllabicity" (_PIEP_, p. 112).  For the stage
> "pre-IE with phonemic stress", /^/ is non-segmental, like the phonemes /"/
> ("maximum stress") and /'/ ("minimum stress"), but he asserts that /"^/ (a
> sequence? or simultaneous?) "becomes segmental; allophone [e]" (_PIEP_ p.
> 113).  (This is a non-standard use of the word "allophone"; the more modern
> "realization" would have been much more appropriate.)

Leo, c'mon. Give Lehmann a break. He used "phoneme" for "syllabicity" because
there really was not a recognized term then for his analyzed parts of /"^/,
realized as [e]. But, I will grant you this point: I am guilty of what I
accused you. I understood Lehmann in "my" terms rather that the terms he was
actually employing. I can see that his terminology could have been improved but
I still believe his basic idea (as I understood it) has merit.

> But he adds: "In the neighborhood of resonants it [i.e. /^/ -- LAC] combines
> with segmental phonemes [i.e. the resonants -- LAC] in simultaneous
> articulation:..."  Thus /y^/ yields [i], etc.  In these two stages his /^/ is
> most emphatically *not* segmental, which is what I and some others have been
> hollering about: it makes no sense to say it's not.

I have to agree that a simple extension of the principle to resonants creates
just the kind of problems you have identified here.

<snip>

>>> 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(e) and *-"te.

> Won't work.  Consider the perfect active, where the 3.sg. desinence is PIE
> -e, but the stress was on the root (as demonstrated by accent in Greek and
> Sanskrit and failure of Verner's Law to operate on Germanic preterite
> singular forms, though the plurals were affected; we might also note that the
> form had o-grade vocalism rather than zero or reduced grade, as in the
> plural).  (Yes, it is true that most Greek perfects are reduplicated, and the
> reduplication has the accent in the singular.  But the few unreduplicated
> perfects do accent the root: _oi^de_ 'he knows'.  And augmented or not, the
> plural forms do accent the desinence.)

As for the 3rd sg. perfect active, -e is understandable on the same principle
if we consider the earlier form to have been -e: (from *-He), reduced to -e in
a stress-unaccented syllable.

>> IMHO, the morpheme for the second and third persons, containing <t>, has
>> a unitary origin: *T{H}O, 'tribe-member'.

> Given the tone of recent discussions, I'd best not say what I think of that
> proposal.

If you have *reasons* for rejecting this as a possibility, do not hesitate to
let us all know.

> Let's settle for a notational matter.  Angled brackets are used to indicate
> *graphemes*, i.e. units of *written notation*.  <t> means very precisely
> "lower-case t", not any kind of raw sound [t] or phoneme /t/ or morpheme {t}
> (all standard notations, by the way).  It's OK to fudge by simply italicizing
> everything, but don't use a specific notation if you don't mean it.

Noted.

Pat

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