Some time ago I mentioned in discussion some
modern attempts at a fable - albeit a different fable - in the style of
Schleicher's Eine Fabel of 1868 (which was updated by Hirt in 1939 and Lehmann
& Zgusta in 1979).
If anyone is interested, I stumbled across it
again, at JIES 22 1994, p67, called "PIE a multiangular view". Scholars
were invited to give their version of the PIE for a Sanskrit tale beginning
a:si:d ra:ja:
I can't type out all versions of the whole tale
here, but I thought you might be interested in (a) which scholars were involved
(b) a taster of what they do - so I've given the first two sentences, and (c)
the very different approaches of some of them. (I'll do my best with the
diacritics.)
Sen Subhadra Kumar
nu re:k's e:st. sos n.putlos
e:st
Y L Arbeitman
E re:g~s es=t. so n.~pu~t-lo-s
es~t-i.
E P Hamp
to re-'k's e'H(e)est. so
n.putlos e'h(e)est
W P Lehmann
po'tis ghe ?est.
so'-kwe n.g.?to's ?est.
M Mayrhofer
nu re:k's eh1est. sos
n.putlos eh1est.
J Puhvel
e-'st re-'g'. g'o'nEos
e'sme:y ne:st.
W Winter
e:st nu re:ks
It is interesting to compare Arbeitman's algebraic
approach to Winter's more naturalisic one, and to see the variety of different
ways of writing the same PIE phoneme. The choices of different vocabulary
and word order, I think, tell us less. Each scholar justifies his
particular choices in the JIES article.
Peter