Lehmann's Syllabicity

[petegray]

>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. ...
>I would first like to learn what list-members consider to be the better
>alternatives for an explanation of this phenomenon.

A similar case can be made for Sanskrit, where we do have some information
about its origin.   Sanskrit can (almost) be described as a one-vowel
language in the same way as PIE almost can - we had this suggestion about a
year ago on the list, I believe.  In Sanskrit it is due to the collapse of
original short *e, *a and *o into the single vowel <a>.  There are
sufficient traces of both *e and *o for us to be sure that it is not a
continuation of a one-vowel system from PIE, but is properly derived from a
situation with at least a three-way distinction.

We might therefore wonder if the so-called PIE one-vowel system is due to
collapse from an earlier situation.   This is what is argued by the
Nostraticists.  Kaiser & Shevoroshkin suggest a complete collapse of short
vowels in "West Nostratic" while they are kept separate in Uralic and Altaic
and Dravidian.  Bomhard's view (1996) is rather more complicated, and
therefore more nuanced.    In essence he avoids the idea of vowel collapse,
but does allow certain diphtongs and simple vowels to merge into a PIE
system from which IE could develop through further changes.

We must also add in here two theories that affect vowels:
   Firstly, that a < *eH pushed and original **a to *e in some IE dialects.
   Secondly, that an original **ka, **ke, **ko collapsed inot the ke, k'e,
kwe we see in PIE.

Peter