Re: persian and semitic

From: John Atkinson (johnacko_at_bigpond.com)
Date: 02/28/05 

Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 01:17:23 GMT

"John Atkinson" <johnacko@bigpond.com> wrote...
>
> "Ruud Harmsen" <realemailseesite01@rudhar.com.invalid> wrote...

> > Sat, 26 Feb 2005 00:55:58 +1000: Jacques Guy <jguy@alphalink.com.au>:
> >
> > >Ruud Harmsen wrote:

> > >> What is surprising if that there
> > >> are only so few unrelated languages that have this vowel system
> > >> [a, i, u]
> > >
> > >Think about what you just wrote. Quechua has only three
> > >vowels too. And, IIRC, so has Okinawan.
>
> Only the Yonaguni dialect -- The main Shuri dialect has /a, i, u, e:, o:/.
> All other dialects have a centralised i, and some have up to seven vowel
> phonemes.
>
> > And (I do remember
> > >correctly) many Australian languages (most, perhaps).
>
> At a rough guess, about 40% of Australian languages have three vowels /a,
i,
> u/. nearly as many have six, /a. a:, i, i:, u, u:/, a small number have
two
> /a, @/. The rest have four or more, including /e/, /o/, /@/, etc. It
seems
> most likely that proto-Australian had /a. a:, i, i:, u, u:/.
>
> Most of the other families which have some /a, i, u/ languages (including,
I
> think, Afroasiatic, Eskimo-Aleut, Aymara-Quechua, Totonac-Tepehua,
> Indo-Iranian) have contrasting length, that is /a:, i:, u:/ as well, in
most
> of these languages

Looking round a bit more, add the following families:
Yuman
Muskogean
Misumalpan (Miskitu etc)
Of these, only proto-Quechua and proto-Misumalpan didn't have contrasting
length.
Proto-Eskimo apparently had /@/, so scratch that family.

I can't find any 2- or 3-vowel languages in sub-saharan Africa, New Guinea,
North and East Asia (except Okinawa), or the Pacific (except Australia).

John.

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