About *wlkWos:
----------------------
I disagree about *wlkWos being assumed, as Jens does, to be older than
the process of ablaut that it operates under. There is nothing showing us
conclusively that *wlkWos predates the vowel loss. It can stem just fine
from the period after vowel loss that precipitated the use of an accent
driven ablaut. Period.
The onus is on Jens to prove that *wlkWos predates vowel loss and the
mere appearance of a lost vowel is not sufficient enough to assume this.
About the nominative:
-------------------------------
The only available possibility for the etymology of *-s and by far the most
likely one at that is that it derives from *so. The nominative is marked
only in the animate declension and *so is also a demonstrative used for
_animate_ functions only. Both phonetics and function coincide.
Simple reasoning that fails Jens.
Marked nominatives are rare and unstable so we have no license to
extend a marked nominative infinitely into the past. Another fact that
escapes Jens.
Externally, there is no correlation between IE's marked nominative and
the unmarked nominatives of Uralic and EskimoAleut, yet a clear
relationship for the accusative ending *-m. This emphasizes that IE's
marked nominative is surely a very recent innovation. But Jens can't
handle this fact either because in his mind, all strong case endings
must be created equal (and at the same period of time) simply
because they are classified under the same name.
So, Jens chooses to promote his **-z solution even though I've
already justifiably elaborated more than enough times that it is
undesirable for the most common suffixes to contain a most
uncommon sound. That it COULD occur is a distracting exercise
in irrelevant what-ifs. Jens COULD be struck by lightning one day
so that I no longer have to argue with him about trivial
commonsense points. Idle possibility and highest probability are
simply not the same, and Jens therefore continues to be
unelectrocuted.
So my solution stands as the superior one available thus far.
About the aorist
-----------------------
But to further nail the coffin in, the aorist is intimately tied to
this solution. In Jens' crazy solution we have endings for the
nominative and aorist in **z, both without any clear origin, and
using an obscenely rare phoneme. As the origin of the
nominative is quite clear, so too is the origin of the aorist. The
aorist derives from the verbal derivation of noun stems in *-s-
which signified a state of action, like an English gerundive
like English "going".
The lengthening of both the nominative, whether athematic
or thematic (in re of thematic vowels), and the aorist is unified
under the process of a secondary loss of vowel, "clipping",
which affected all newly created *-CV suffixes _after_ the Mid
IE vowel loss, causing the compensatory lengthening we see.
None of these suffixes need to be in **z and it is to our
disadvantage to insist on this. I can't continue fighting against
a solution that is so inane as to deny us of an etymology of
two suffixes in favour of a groundless, improbable phoneme.
About *so/*to-
---------------------
There is only one very specific instance of the stem *so-, the
animate nominative. The rest of the paradigm shows a declined *to-.
We never see *so- declined with case endings (only the feminine
ending *-ax). Even the plural uses *to-. Let's accept these facts
and start from here.
Here's your solution in a nutshell:
1. We _assume_ that *so- and *to- are the same word.
Why?? What shows us that they are?? Pure assumption based on
nothing.
2. We then assume some more that *s & *t alternate initially in
order to support the above groundless fantasy...
Why?? There's no evidence of *s/*t alternation initially or even
medially either! Where is Jens getting his ideas from? Thin air
obviously.
Two random and baseless assumptions. It's as plain as day.
My solution is as follows:
1. We assume that *so was simply an undeclined animate deictic
added to an already declined paradigm using *to-.
That's exactly what we see. The stem *so is only used in
_animate_ functions and is never declined with case endings.
Conclusion
---------------
Why is Jens continually fighting the obvious for something that
takes us on a trippy acid journey through a garden of unlikely
possibilities underneath the canopy of colourful what-if skies?
Sure it's a pretty voyage through insanity but that's not what
theory-making is about. But then, there are two kinds of
theorists: the idealists and the realists.
I've justified the penultimate accent rule several times but
Jens turns a deaf ear. This kind of dialogue is like talking to an
extremist Christian about the irrelevance of worship. He will
never look at the fact that the Bible is a bundle of self-
contradiction and that the very act of creation itself is beyond
logic because faith isn't about logic. Faith is about believing
despite the odds. This is Jens on PIE.
If "IE was a normal language except where it causes problems"
then how is a nominative originating from *so (trivial solution),
over an originless nominative in a rare phoneme **z (bizarre
solution), a "problem"?
Why does Jens seek problems where there are none?
- gLeN
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