Re: [tied] Re: a-Epenthesis: This time its personal

Jens:

> That not the simplest solution. It is a well-known, if
> tenacious, fallacy that *some* clusters have come about by
> loss of intervening vowels. That is no reason to assume the
> same for all other clusters.

A tenacious fallacy, now? It is a _fact_ that some initial clusters have
come about by loss of intervening vowels, so perhaps you mean the presumed
"fallacy" that _all_ initial consonant clusters are the product of
syncope. Again, to think that some initial clusters are NOT from syncope
while others plainly are needs more effort to substantiate and I don't
think that it can be. I haven't heard of anyone being succesful at that
arguement so far.

> And if you take the consequence of that and only take earlier vowels
> for granted where alternants show them, you get a much smoother
> morphology and accentology.

It depends what you call smooth. Such a new theory would completely
sever ties with Uralic and Tyrrhenian. We'd up with a meaningless
mathematical view of pre-IE, no more correct than a monovocalic
pre-Sanskrit.

> It is proved that way by the simple observation that, when the
> accent moves from a root-vowel it never moves to a later position
> within the root, but always out of the root. That means there was
> only one vowel in the root.

Perhaps you forgot about *peku and genitive *pekeu-s and all other nouns
that likewise follow this pattern?

> That says that we can know what we see, no more.

Tell that to quantum physicists and geneticists.


= gLeN