LINGUIST List 2.65

Friday, 8 Mar 1991

Disc: Celtic, Mother of, Vowels

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. "Michael Kac", Re: Celtic?
2. , Mother of
3. Paul Black, Education, NT Uni, Darwin, RE: Mother of
4. "NORVAL SMITH, RE: Kamprath's Query on Vowels
5. Pamela Munro, Kamprath's question on vowels

To Nathan: I can't be of any direct help, but you might try contacting
my colleague Nancy Stenson at stensonvx.acs.umn.edu; she is up on things
Celtic and might have info of the kind you're seeking.

To Mark Turner, re "mother of":

It's an interesting locution, but it means something else in Islam,
according to NPR, which had a piece explaining it the other day. It
seems it means, essentially, "big". So, e.g, there can be more than
one "mother of battles". (Notice that no one calls any of these things
a "big mother".

Carol Georgopoulos

I enjoyed Mark Turner's posting on the expression 'mother of', but I
couldn't help wondering if his interpretation would be equally
appropriate in Iraqi culture.

I'm referring specifically to his suggestion that 'The mother of all
battles is pure of stock, more clearly a battle than any other.' I
know little about Arabic, but in various Australian Aboriginal languages
'mother of' could mean little more than 'big' - e.g. the thumb may
be called the mother of the hand. I took Saddam's 'mother of all
battles' to mean that it was just going to be one huge battle, not
that it would somehow be an especially definitive battle proto-
typically.

Paul Black / black_pddarwin.ntu.edu.au / Northern Territory University

Re Kamprath's search for unstressed v-systems with > 1 unstressed vowel, I don't
understand his dismissal of English. Apart from the fact that he can't have
looked at all the forms of English around, there are many standard forms of
English with contrasts among the unstressed vowels.
"accept" and "except" contrast in RP phonologically between a schwa and an [I].
In my English the contrast is phonetically between a retracted [E] and a
sound close to that symbolised in the IPA by an inverted "a".
Norval Smith

Hello,
You may want to look at some Uto-Aztecan languages. In Luiseno, the case
I can describe most clearly, the answers to your grammatical questions are
3 a, b, f no
3 c stress
4 yes, many (deletion, shortening)
5 i, e > unstressed i; u, o > unstressed u; a remains a.
In stressed sylls there are both long and short vowels. There are essentially
no long vowels in unstressed sylls.
I'm giving you the way I perceive the unstressed vowels. Bill Bright has
observed to me that he thinks the quality is somewhat lower, i.e. perhaps
unstressed i, e neutralize (for him) to e. The point is that they neutralize,
however; this is not in dispute.
There are no phonological grammars, but there is a considerable literature
on Luiseno. You might look at two papers by me in IJAL, one on reduplication
in 1973 (I think) coauthored with Peter Benson, one late last year on
historical comparative Cupan (the immediate subfamily which contains L.).
I'm sorry I don't have refs with me here. Please ask me if you'd like
more information.
I'm sure that other related languages have similar processes. The one
that seems closest to me, on the basis of what I know, is Gabrielino, in
which apparently i, e > e and u, o > o when unstressed. I say apparently
because this language is extinct, but this seems to be what happens in
JP Harrington's field notes. I'm afraid there's nothing published on this,
but you may certainly cite me to this effect if it helps you.
I'd like to see a copy of your paper.
Pam Munro