PIE e/o Ablaut

[proto-language]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Stanley and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Stanley Friesen" <sarima at friesen.net>
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 3:36 PM

> At 05:27 AM 3/16/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> As for "(true) absolute unversal(s)", I do not know of any in linguistics
>> or any other field. I enjoyed Plato myself but I think it is a mistake to
>> take him seriously.

[SF]

> Let's put it this way: the rarer something is among living languages, the
> more evidence I would require to accept it in a reconstructed language.

[PRp]

>> I believe that in the earliest Indian, /e:/ must have, at least
>> transitorily, have been pronounced like English /ey/ (Trager-Smith), and
>> /o:/ like English /ow/ (T-S); and the early Indian grammarians clearly
>> treat these sounds as diphthongal.

>> But where is the simple (uncompounded) /e/ in Old Indian? Or the simple
>> /o/.

>> It does not exist so far as we can determine.

>> I think it is obvious that /e/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment
>> preceding /j/ and /o/ is an allophone of /a/ in an environment preceding
>> /w/; and, as they have no existence outside of these conditioned
>> environments, they cannot be considered phonemes, whether they retained
>> their earliest diphthongal character or not.

[SF]

> When the diphthongal character is lost, so is the *conditioning*
> *environment*.  Thus at that point they do indeed become independent
> phonemes, namely /e:/ and /o:/.   This is standard phonology.  New sounds
> become phonemic when the conditioning factor is lost.  (Now this does
> produce an unusual situation of a language with more contrasts in it long
> vowel system than its short, but that is not unheard of, and Sanskrit is
> far better attested than many living languages, so it is hardly
> reconstructed anyhow].

[PR]

Well, if you will forgive me for saying so, I think you have completely
missed the point of the question.

We are talking about whether Old Indian *at one point* had basically a one
vowel system.

I think the facts make obvious that there was a time, however brief, when
Old Indian had only /a/ as a vowel, with [ay] and [aw] on the way to
becoming /ai/ -> /e:/ and /au/ -> /o:/.

Above you wrote: "the rarer something is among living languages, the more
evidence I would require to accept it in a reconstructed language."

If that is your position, why not put it in practice on all questions under
consideration?

Can you name any "living language" that has a vowel system of /a/, /e:/, /i/
(giving you the benefit of the doubt by counting /i/ as a vowel rather than
a vocalic allophone of /j/ in an avocalic position), /o:/, /u/, (giving you
the benefit of the doubt by counting /u/ as a vowel rather than a vocalic
allophone of /w/ in an avocalic position)?

If this is not "unheard of", how about letting us hear about it?

>> [SFp]

>>> The fact that the vowel in 'leapt' (in English) is obviously *derived* from
>>> the same vowel as in 'leap' does not make the distinction in vowel quality
>>> any less phonemic in the current language.

>> [PRp]

>> Yes, but /e/ is not an allophone of /i/, is it?

[SF]

> I am not sure what your point here is.  I was just pointing out that being
> *derived* diachronically is not sufficient reason to deny *synchronic*
> phoneme status, and gave an example of that.

[PR]

I confess I do not have any idea about what "*derived* diachronically" is
supposed to mean.

I am talking about a *synchronic* situation during which Old Indian had /a/,
/ay/, and /aw/.

>> [PRp]

>> Regardless of its acceptance, I find it very strange. Pre- means 'before';
>> if a form occurred *before* PIE came into existence, then it is non-PIE.  If
>> it is non-PIE, why not call it something else --- like Nostratic?

[SF]

> Because that implies it was ancestral to other languages as well.  Terms of
> the form Pre-PX refer to *internally* reconstructed stages with no separate
> descendent languages known.  Thus Pre-PIE is assumed to be *later* than
> Nostratic (or whatever one calls it), but earlier than PIE,  Moreover it
> has no known descendent languages that are not also IE languages, so no
> other name is available for it.

[PR]

Well, something has been lost in translation here. You mentioned Pre-IE, I
thought, not Pre-PIE.

>> [SF]

>>> Umm, what sort of example would you expect?

>> [PR]

>> True minimal pairs, a paltry requirement for phonemicity that would be
>> undisputed in any other language.

[SF]

> Not at all.  Many phonemes are accepted as such *without* minimal pairs
> even in living languages.

[PR]

You assertion by itself does not convince me.

Would you mind citing an example of any phoneme in any language that is not
in a minimal pair?

[SF]

> To show some sound difference is not phonemic
> you have to show that it occurs in a *strictly* conditioned fashion.  If it
> is not *uniformly* due to some identifiable set of conditioning factor,
> then it is left as a phoneme.  This is how it is presented in all of the
> best texts on phonology.

[PR]

Could you name a "best text on phonology", and cite a relevant definition of
phoneme from it?

[SF]

> The *origin* of */o/ can be argued for PIE, but the very fact that it *can*
> be argued is strong evidence that at *that* time it was already a distinct
> phoneme.  If it were an allophone of */a/ then the conditioning factors
> *still* should be visible, and apply uniformly to all cases.  It is the
> fact that there are too many environments in which */o/ occurs, with no
> identifiable commonality, that makes the sound a phoneme.

[PR]

Sorry, I just cannot accept that. If /o/ is an IE phoneme, it should occur
in true minimal pairs. I have this on the authority of a degreed linguist
with whom I have consulted on this question. Your reluctance to accept this
basic method of establishing a phoneme continues to amaze me!

>> [SFp]

>>> The shift **a: > *o would have been a regular phonetic change, and thus
>>> would have been essentially universal.  By the very nature of the
>>> hypothesis no *direct* trace would be left - ALL of the old a:s would have
>>> gone over into o's, resulting in an alternation between *e and *o where
>>> there had formerly been one between **a and **a:.  So, in a sense the e/o
>>> alternation *is* the example.

>> [PRp]

>> I do not think I am the only reader who will find this dizzyingly circular.

>> The fact of e/o alternation "proves" an a/a: alternation?

[SF]

> I NEVER said that.  I was just pointing out that the lack of a direct
> example in PIE does not *refute* the hypothesis, as such is not expected.

[PR]

Proposing a hypothesis is not particularly valuable if no evidence can be
brought to support it.

[SF]

> To put it another way: we have in PIE what can be viewed as the expected
> result of a regular sound change, so it regularity is hardly evidence
> *against* a sound change.

> Certainly other evidence is needed.  My preference for that hypothesis is
> based simply on the fact that it is the only origin model for /o/ in PIE I
> have yet seen that has actually been *observed* to occur in other languages
> (English, for example).

[PR]

So, you consider that a chain shift was going on in IE?

What are the some of the other details? Other shifts?

[SF]

> Other alternatives include that the /o/ is ancient, and inherited from the
> preceding proto-language (e.g. Nostratic).  If it turns out that the
> /e/-/o/ distinction in PIE corresponds regularly to some vowel quality
> distinction in a wider group of languages, then inheritance is supported.
> (Now, at present no such evidence is forthcoming, and I would be surprised
> if it were, as /o/ looks recent to me in PIE as reconstructed).

[PRp]

>> And why is that preferable to considering /o/ an allophone of /e/ under
>> certain accentual/tonal conditions?

[SF]

> Because nobody has come up with a consistently applicable set of such
> conditions that can explain all of the occurrences of /o/ in PIE.

[PR]

I am under the impression that a consistent explanation ofIE /o/ has been
formulated: namely, that /e'/ becomes /o/ when the stress-accent is
transferred to another syllable.

>> [PRp]

>> Certainly very interesting. But your example certainly does not mean that
>> we should expect OE *sa:wian for ME sew (/so:/) when seowian is attested,
>> does it?

[SF]

> Umm, where do you get that?

> You seem to keep turning what I say around and making the implication go
> the opposite direction from anything I ever said.

[PR]

I believe it was your point that OE /a:/ shows up as Modern English /o:/.

Pat

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