Re[6]: [tied] Re: PIE initial *a

At 4:40:48 AM on Thursday, May 15, 2008, Patrick Ryan wrote:

> From: "fournet.arnaud" <fournet.arnaud@...>

>> From: "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>

[...]

>>> Please note that I am not in the least defending Patrick's
>>> 'law of phonological entropy', which is little more than a
>>> license to to make arbitrary adjustments to adjust the
>>> theoretically predicted forms to fit the actual data.

[...]

> First, I would contend that a change from *a: to *a is
> 'phonological' in any full sense of the word.

[Typo corrected.] Not when the conditioning factor is
semantic/lexical. And even if the conditioning factors were
phonological, the 'law', as worded, would in fact be merely
a tendency. As stated it would also allow, for example,
*dH > *d (loss of aspiration) and *d > *t (loss of voicing)
under the same semantic conditions that allow loss of length.

And in another vein altogether, it fails to explain multiple
*ag- and *al- roots in Pokorny.

[...]

Brian