🚀 go-pugleaf

On 29 Jan 1997 14:17:47 GMT, clary@sesostris.cnrm.meteo.fr (CLARY
Olivier) wrote:

>In article <32EDD073.5691@anteo.it> Alfredo Moscianese <alfredo@anteo.it> writes:
>>About vowels it has to be added that, as Pisani says, "short vowels were more 
>>open than the corresponding long ones".
>[...]
>>["open" e] (the one denoted in IPA by an epsilon)
>>["open" i] (the one denoted in IPA by a small capital i)
>>["open" o] (the one denoted in IPA by a turned c)
>>["open" u] (the one denoted in IPA by an upsilon or a small capital u)
>>for short vowels
>
>I had seen such "English" values in another article and attributed it
>to an English bias but now I wonder: does Pisani or any other expert really
>say that all short vowels are more open and not only the middle-aperture ones,
>o and e?

Yes.  The values /U/ and /I/ for short <u> and <i> are assured by the
fact that in Romance (except Sardinian and partly Romanian) these
sounds merged with /o/ and /e/ (from long <o> and <e>).  If there were
timbre distinctions between long and short <a> is less certain.  In
any case, the Romance languages show no trace of it.

>And I was told the opposite for classical Greek: omega and eta more open.
>Is it really so?

Yes, at least in Athens.  When, due to the loss of certain consonants
(*w, *j, *s) two e's or two o's ran together, the resulting long /e:/
and long /o:/ were closed, unlike the open /E:/ and /O:/ written eta
and omega (from etymologic /a:/ or /e:/ in the case of eta, /o:/ in
the case of omega).  These closed varieties of /e:/ and /o:/ were
written <ei> and <ou> in Athenian Greek, merging (at least in writing)
with the result of etymological /ei/ and /ou/.

==
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal                     ~ ~
Amsterdam                   _____________  ~ ~
mcv@pi.net                 |_____________|||

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