--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:
> And Semitic is a _theory_, not proof by any means. Choose an
attested
> language please *and* demonstrate that it is anything other than a
> very minority situation, then I'll reconsider its applications to
IE
> and pre-IE stages.
[and the same message ten times again]
What I quoted was actually worded in such a way that it applied to
living languages, not to a hypothetic Proto-Semitic. If that is
right, Arabic ought to be a real example of what you insist cannot
be. I do not know if that is true, close to the truth, or far
removed from the truth. But that is the matter to be addressed.
> I can only hope that you see the point eventually.
Anybody can see the point. But you are pressing the point beyond
reasonable limits. It does not change much if such a language has a
million words with morphologically predictable vowels, and twenty
without. That should at least allow IE at any stage to have, a
priori, a million words with predictable vowels and twenty without.
If a living language can come very, very close to having a zero-
vowel system, IE can also be imagined to have potentially something
very, very close to a one-vowel system.
Jens