Mark J. Reed wrote:
> Huh?  /E/ vs /e/ wasn't phonemic in CL?  News to me. Or are you
> talking about the early period when the distinction was quantity
> rather than quality?

No - I'm talking strictly about Classical Latin; essentially 
a written language but one, no doubt, to which the speech of 
the Equites & Senatorial classes and other educated Romans 
of the 1st centuries BCE and CE more or less approximated, 
especially in formal mode.

There were six vowels, including [y] in words of Greek 
origin. The argument only is whether we posit 12 vowel 
phonemes, i.e. 6 short & 6 long, or whether we have only 6 
vowel phonemes + /:/, the phoneme of length. But counting 
/:/ as a phoneme seems a bit odd to me.

Now, evidence suggests that, as in modern German, the long 
vowels were tenser and somewhat higher than the short 
vowels, which were laxer and lower. I.e. it is likely that 
/e/ tended towards [E], while /e:/ tended towards [e:]. But 
the difference between [E] and [e] had no phonemic significance.

This was almost certainly the case in 'Vulgar' spoken Latin 
of the early period. But at some stage, as the result of 
Latin spreading as a spoken Koine over the western & central 
European provinces and along north Africa, except for Egypt, 
length distinction collapsed as word stress became stronger 
and the earlier non-phonemic qualitative differences assumed 
phonemic significance, at least in stressed syllables. In VL 
we appear to have this change in stressed syllables in the 
early years of the Empire:
/i:/ --> /i/
/i/ --> /I/
/e:/ --> /e/
/e/ --> /E/
/a:/ -->/a/
/a/ --> /a/ (both long and short /a/ fell together)
/o/ --> /O/
/o:/ --> /o/
/u/ --> /U/
/u:/ --> /u/

/y(:)/ wasn't part of common, spoken Latin

In the west /I/ and /e/ fell together as /e/, and similarly 
/U/ and /o/ fell together as /e/. Also /E/ and /O/ diphthong 
to [jE] and [wO] in open syllables everywhere and in 
closed/blocked syllables as well in Iberia.

-- 
Ray
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http://www.carolandray.plus.com
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Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu.
There's none too old to learn.
[WELSH PROVERB]