Lehmann's Syllabicity

[proto-language]

Dear Peter and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "petegray" <petegray at btinternet.com>
To: <Indo-European at xkl.com>
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2001 11:49 AM
Subject: Re: Lehmann's Syllabicity

[PRp]

>> 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.

[PG]

> 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.

[PCR]

This interests me greatly. What do you consider to be the "sufficient traces"?

[PG]

> 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.

[PCR]

I think it is obvious that the view of Kaiser and Sheveroshkin is identical in
this respect to my own: three vowels become ^, Lehmann's syllabicity.

[PG]

> We must also add in here two theories that affect vowels:
>    Firstly, that a < *eH pushed an 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.

[PCR]

Regarding the first theory, it seems totally unnecessary if we assume that all
short vowels collapsed in ^, from which, for morphological (perhaps combined
with phonological) reasons, *e/*o developed. ^ from *a does not need any more
impetus than ^ from *o.

On the second one, I cannot accept the idea that IE labiovelars developed from
pre-PIE dorsal stops + *o, presumably later *w^ because they corresponds to
fricatives in other languages derived from Nostratic. I believe at an early
stage, *C+o did result in *Cw^ but that these glides were lost without trace in
all branches.

But, I do believe that pre-PIE dorsal stops + *e did develop into dorsal stops
+ *y^, and that this glide, rather than the quality of the vowel which followed
it (with some exceptions), determined the palatality of the dorsal stop in
satem-languages.

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)