I to Jens:
> The *o-grade is not an inflection in all cases. That would be like
> saying that because we have English "sing" and inflected "sang",
> we must think of "can" as the past tense. Why are YOU assuming such
> a funny thing?
Richard:
> Because it works? In Germanic morphology, "can" is a present-
> preterite, i.e. a past tense form with present meaning. The Old
> English inflection is:
Alright, wiseguy. Now explain "to lack", "to rack" and "to map".
You know what I mean. English "a" in verbs is not purely dependent
on morphology, and this is what I'm talking about as being the case
for practically any language, including IE. I believe, and in fact
we see, that verbs can contain *a or other vocalisms despite being
duratives and despite the overall pattern of *e-vocalism.
What am I trying to say? Just simply that IE _does_ have this
tendency of *e-vocalism but it is not an absolute rule. We must
expect deviations from the norm. Maybe I side so much with deviations
from the norm because I am one myself :)
= gLeN