From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 39396
Date: 2005-07-24
----- Original Message -----
From: "elmeras2000" <jer@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2005 8:59 AM
Subject: [tied] Re: Short and long vowels
<snip>
> My opinion of Patrick's hypothesis (in case you are interested):
> * It is an interesting alternative hypothesis.
> * It hasn't been negated (at least not yet).
> * If it is not negated, it may be preferred by Occam's Razor, since
> it does not needlessly multiply laryngeals.
> * Insofar as there might be some merit in his (sometimes seemingly
> fanciful, to say the least) Nostratic reconstructions, his
> hypothesis may be a necessary consequence of those results.
I disagree on all counts. The "pre-Nostratic" chopped liver he makes
out of IE words is the worst kind of pseudoscholarhsip by fiat I
have ever seen in this field.
***
Patrick:
Jens, your continued antagonism and willingness to susbstitute insults for
argument saddens me.
I have found our mutual discussions very enlightening. I have made important
changes in my theory based on input from you.
Now let me tell you in a non-accusatory way, you are very devoted to some
principles which cannot be proved but, in the absence of counter-principles
have served you well.
You call my analyses "chopped liver" but you have never confronted the
underlying premise, which is that language is an atomic structure. Any root
is composed of smaller parts. These smaller parts are almost unrecoverable
through PIE alone because 1) the stress-accent has eliminated the original
final vocalic desinences of simple roots (*CVC had to at some earlier date
have been *CVCV); and 2) the Ablaut process has masked the qualities of even
stress-accented root-vowels because all we can normally see are the
appropriate vowels of the Ablaut (*é).
We have only the slightest traces in PIE of what those lost vowels were: 1)
a palatalized dorsal normally indicates a dorsal + _original_ *e; coronal
aspirates that had _original_ *o appear as *dw and *tw rather than as
expected *dh and *t(h); and original *e, *a, and *o preceded or followed by
a 'laryngeal' (either /?/ or /h/) preserve their vocalic qualities, and show
up as *e:, *a:, and *o:, even though they may be shortened later if no short
voweled root has the identical consonantal structure.
How can we know this? Because PIE is distantly related to Sumerian, which
preserves a commonly inherited *e, *a, and *o as *i, *a, and *u.
This allows us to differentiate 1. *mén-, 2. *mén-, and 3. *mén- into
separate roots, semantically unrelated (*m-*n chosen for illustration
purposes only).
You seem to believe that PIE roots arose in complete form, and that is, I
sumbit, an irrational belief. It goes against eveything we know about the
world we live in.
***