Miguel:
>The attempts at explaining PIE /a/ through laryngeals only have failed.
Peter:
>No. The attempt to explain all PIE /a/ has not yet succeeded [...]
>it is disingenuous of you to suggest otherwise.
Miguel:
>Well, I genuinely feel that they have failed.
This illustrates the recurring problems faced when carrying on a logical
debate with Miguel. Initially, he states a bold, unprovable assertion.
One confronts him. Unless it is Piotr, he doesn't listen and holds on to
his blind beliefs. Another List member will eventually pipe up and
confront him as well. He then comes out with the truth. In this case, the
truth being that his statement is merely founded on his own illogical
"feelings", not fact. Obviously, somebody has problems admitting that
they are wrong out of fear of appearing to others as inferior. To err
is human, as they say, but Miguel may not be human afterall :)
So as a result, while I try to keep things seperate, inevitably in
such discussions, Logic, Theory and Baseless Conjecture are smelted
together into a chaos of meaningless, irrational dialogue.
To maintain order in this topic, I will restate that it is illogical
to assume that *a, if it must be caused by something, is caused by
anything other than laryngeals that are known to have caused this
colouring in IE unless sufficient evidence shows otherwise.
How does a labial phoneme like *m help to RESIST labialization of
neighbouring *a to *o? This is immediately counterintuitive.
- gLeN
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