Re: [tied] Thematic vowel - *to, *so

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, glen gordon <glengordon01@...>
wrote:

> Me:
> > Or rather, *o is (by way of Vowel Shift) from *a.
> > Hence earlier *sa and *ta(t) when stressed.
>
> Torsten:
> > Aha. You explain their deviance from normal practice
> > by proposing that they were always different.
> > Ingenious.
>
> Yes. I don't agree with Jens that *t becomes *s in
> word-initial position, only word-final and only
> during the Indo-Tyrrhenian stage. Rather, I connect
> *so with Uralic's 3ps pronoun and reconstruct
> Proto-Steppe *sa "the" together with a seperate
> pronoun *to "that" (the medial demonstrative in
> the trideictic system of *ki, *to and *o).
>
>

What I was referring to was your idea (as I have understood it?) of
having two schwa's, not that of keeping *so and *to separate (which
I want to do too). In that case you don't have to explain the non-
occurrence of /e/ in *so and *to and that looked like a cop-out to
me.

But now I learn from Decsay that Proto-Finno-Ugric had 'vowel
harmonic alternating pairs' (vel sim.!) *ke/*ko "who"
*te/*to "that". Things are getting complicated!


Torsten