Jens:
> It is absolutely wrong to make it appear that IE *e is always the
> product of an unaccented vowel.
Where did you get that?
If you are to paraphrase my views properly it is rather that
"_unaccented_ *e is most often the product of an unaccented vowel" but
this is ridiculously redundant. Subsequently and more painfully
redundantly, accented *e most often becomes accented *e. I use the
term "most often" because Acrostatic Regularization obliterated some
original accent patterns in mid Late IE. Perhaps you will reflect my
theories properly next time.
> What happened to the basic ablaut observation that é/zero reflects
> the two accent variants of a common vowel?
Nothing at all. Rather, you misunderstood completely. See above or
reread my original post.
> This appears to apply to neither the s-stem *g^énH1-os which is not
> thematic, nor the thematic noun *g^ónH1-o-s which has -o- in the first
> syllable. What roughly are you making sure is being understood here?
Ah, you got me. However, this changes nothing since *genhas still
predicts later *genhos. This is just a matter of incorrect segmentation
on my part. Mea culpa. Likewise, *ganhas must be the preform of *gonhos,
regardless of segmentation. The point was that I was writing *genh&s
and *ganh&s before but if *& is an allophone of *a, then *a would be
more proper in the notation as long as we understand what the proper
pronunciation of the unaccented *a is.
>> There is no one-vowel system anywhere here. As I'm trying to get across,
>> monovocalism is an illusion that has more to do with how the two vowels
>> evolved, merged, split and remerged. It produces the effect which we see
>> but this doesn't mean that there was ever a one-vowel stage that you
>> could compare with the situation in Sanskrit. In Sanskrit, we see the
>> simple merger of *e, *a and *o to *a. We don't see any such simple
>> evolution in IE.
>
> We do see a VERY monotonous root vocalism, so monotonous in fact as to
> demand an explanation. What is that explanation under the correct theory
> free of all the flaws of which I alone am found guilty?
>
> A true monovocalic system is not excluded as an option for PIE.
If Sanskrit alone happens to show this artificial 'monovocalism', it
only goes to show that such a thing is exceedingly rare. Perhaps you
can come up with one more language (maybe a living one this time!),
but it still only emphasizes this rarity. So, I'm afraid it is rarity
itself that statistically excludes it as a reasonable option for IE,
particularly when there are other competing theories that exist which
don't rely on these insignificant probabilities.
> There are a limited number of lexemes with other root vowels (better,
> perhaps, first-syllable vowels) than //e//. There *may* be verbal
> roots also with other vowels, but that could be remedied by accepting
> some non-optimal root structures.
If we are talking about IE and if we understand that IE was a _natural_
and _human_ language, then there *must* be verbal roots also with other
vowels! There can be no choice, Jens! List how many languages in the
world have verb roots with only one vocalism?? Aside from Semitic
languages which while unusually regular in comparison to most languages
still no doubt contain exceptions to the rule, the vast majority
of languages allow for multiple vocalisms beyond a shadow of a doubt.
While I agree that *e is indeed the common vocalism for at least the
IE durative, there is still the controversy of the *o-presents that you
haven't succesfully explained as far as I'm aware. There is the matter
of the Narten presents as well, but you of course try to rationalize
that they derive from *e, if I understand. The verbs in *a have not
been explained either. I remember asking the question about the
root *mad- 'be drunk' and how one conjugates it exactly. There weren't
any clear responses.
So we have two choices. One is to deny all forms that don't conform to
a pure *e-vocalism for all verbs (as if IE were some cruel joke by a
prankster god, perhaps some kind of prehistoric Esperanto). This is
obvious madness. The other option is to actually put one's tail between
one's legs and accept both the data which by all accounts appears to
attest to many vocalisms in IE and the universal tendency of languages
to indeed allow multiple vocalisms in verb stems. The latter option,
rather than indulging in irrational suspicion of anything that doesn't
conform to one's theory, allows one's theory to conform to the reality
of the situation. The latter choice should be obvious at this point
unless one has an ego to uphold.
> You of course tell us which to choose all the time, but
> you never give helpful arguments.
If illustrating language universals aren't helpful arguements, I don't
know what are.
> The odd roots could be later additions and so not relevant for an
> older stage for which a monovocalic system could then indeed be the
> solution for roots.
Certainly, I can agree with that statement. For example, any verb
roots with *a-vocalism would according to my theory have been
created by way of Vowel Shift because some instances of *a had
failed to become *o when neighbouring a labial phoneme. That would
explain *mad- nicely as well as some nominal forms which appear to
show a 'true' *a, one not formed by uvular effects.
However, this only confirms that verb roots in *a-grade had existed
in the past alongside those with *e-grade, but as I said, this is
to be expected from a natural, human language.
> It would not help for the thematic vowel, however.
Yes, but we've gone over this before and we mostly agree with each
other so we needn't rehash the trivial.
> That leads to the conclusion that some originally word-final material
> took on a pronunciation not seen elsewhere in the language and retained
> it even after enclitic elements had become the inflectional endings as
> which we know them.
This conclusion is not valid. It's undesirable because you're inventing
elements that are unnecessary. The thematic vowel can be explained
simply as from unaccented *a (pronounced [&]) which lengthens before
voiced segments and doesn't before voiceless ones. All is accounted
for and we need nothing more than that.
> If the clash of a differentiated root vocalism into the unitary vowel
> [...]
I can't follow the rest of this because I can't agree with your out-of-
thin-air conclusion above.
> All this takes us far too far back in time to be of any real value.
This takes us too far back in time? Or too far back into the recesses
of madness. Given the current state of Nostratic, I'd say that line is
still a little blurry.
> We must keep the thematic vowel out of the puzzle concerning the other
> vowels since it goes by rules of its own.
Not really. We're only dealing with unaccented *a as I said. We needn't
invent a new vowel because we'd otherwise wonder what happened to
unaccented *a... well there it is! The thematic vowel is unaccented *a.
This is why I've changed my notation because the typology of that sound
system at the early Late IE level otherwise doesn't make as much sense
with that odd gap together with such a common occurence of *&. Now
everything is accounted for and works normally at every stage and on
every level from phonetics right on up to the morphology. We thus see
what we expect to in a natural language: More instances of *a than the
other vowel *e. It's genius really ;)
Further, we don't really know whether half-lengthening as attested in
the thematic vowel occured also in accented environments or not, and
what we should expect as reflexes of that phenomenon if it did exist
there. Was mLIE *padm (*podm) pronounced ['pa.dm] perhaps while *patis
(*potis) was pronounced ['pati.z]? These are questions to be answered
later as we learn more. For now, that can't be dismissed.
> How can the assumption of splits be styled an explanation of an only
> apparent monovocalism? Surely it would be even more obvious if there were
> no splits. What is the idea of saying such nonsense?
To have the plural *-es be properly etymologized and connected to other
Steppe languages, we need a contrast of at least *e and *a in all stages
of pre-IE.
> Were there other vowels in your "MIE" than "*e", and if so, which
> ones? What PIE distinctions do they correspond to?
MIE had at least two vowels, *e and *a. The two vowels coexisted in
all positions except finally where only *-a was allowed. As a result,
*-a normally disappeared by Syncope except when affected by the
Resistance rules (Paradigmatic Resistance and Suffix Resistance).
We've also seen how phonotactics could resist Syncope if the resultant
form was too awkward, just like in many other living languages, to
avoid instances of triconsonantal clusters in final position.
The disappearance of *-a in final position can be predicted accurately
thanks to the Resistance rules which negate the need for *-e in final
position in MIE for the sake of efficiency. However the contrast, as I
say, is necessary in both accented and unaccented position within the
word. Without the contrast, the origin of the plural within Steppe
becomes senseless and forces us to make up ad hoc rules as to why *e
doesn't act like a thematic vowel... which happens to be your strategy.
Since *e in *-es can be derived from unaccented *e and the thematic vowel
can be derived from unaccented *a (thereby showing the normal abundance
of unaccented phonemic *a), I fail to see how anything can be more
satisfactory as an explanation. The threads are woven too tightly to be
unravelled at this point.
> What is counter-optimal about a vowel system opposing [i] and [u] to a
> third, non-high vowel?
Nothing. It's wonderful and brings a tear to my eye. But now you're
speaking of Proto-Steppe, not IE. (Although, I actually posit a fourth
vowel *& in Proto-Steppe which merges with *a in IndoTyrrhenian to
account for some instances of "what appear to be *u" in ProtoSteppe
that don't affect velar stops in ITyr or Altaic in the expected way.)
> Every time I have said "phonemes" you have slipped into phonetics,
> lecturing the list that, in real phonetic terms, there is no such
> thing as a one-vowel system. Well, hey, nobody said there was. Isn't
> that just supreme?
I wasn't trying to change the subject. However, your idea of the
'phonemic level' in relation to Sanskrit 'monovocalism' honestly appears
in my mind to be in reality almost 'meta-phonemic'. A kind of reification
of the meaningless. In what way does it have pertinence to anything at
all, I still wonder.
= gLeN