Piotr,
I thought a great deal on how I might return the last email you gave, so
I've decided to be curt as I am with all those who have carelessly lost
focus.
References to the "old school", while entertaining for comic relief, are no
substitute for a logical debate. If you would only explain overtly what
constitutes proof of convincing linguistic relationship regarding IE
according to you. If you are unable to, you need not continue to use this
"old school" arguement as a license for ignorance - it's become the usual
last resort for conservatives who find themselves losing their debate (The
ol' "Shame the Competition" Scheme). It doesn't work in advertising so why
should it work here? :)
The Semitic origin remains the best explanation for roots *es-, *weid- and
*leikW- since there are Semitic counterparts without evidence closer to home
and, concerning the last two, they do not conform to general rules of sound
change to explain IE-Uralic correspondances that work for most other words
and grammatical particles. The verbs *ghWen- and *ed- may or may not be
Semitic, I will grant you this possibility.
In Germanic, ablaut is the "regular pattern" and so I would correctly have
rendered /to render/ as foreign but /to lie/ as native. In IE, the thematic
is the "regular pattern", a conclusion you are unable to refute. Thus, the
athematic verbs must be explained (and they just happen to have Semitic
counterparts in both form and meaning).
Finally, the range [*leigheti/*leighti/*ligh�ti] is most certainly not
reconstructable for the most ancient stages of IE, unless you can justify
reconstructing this range of variation with valid daughter examples of this
or parts of this range. Perhaps you were just tired at the time you wrote
this. The verb *pelh- is reconstructed. Many verbs like *lin�kWti with modal
affixes *-n- or *-ye- are clearly derivatives and different in both form and
function, Piotr, so there is nothing to argue.
It should be understood by someone caught up on IE studies such as yourself
that "stative" verbs such as *es- or *weid- did not take modal affixes like
verbs such as *leigh- - this fact, combined with later innovation in
languages like Greek or Sanskrit especially, is the source of your
"polymorphic" dillusion. Period.
... and I saved the desert for last:
>It would be rather easy to imitate your style, so perhaps I should >respond
>with a pastiche, since the detailed refutation of a lengthy >piece of
>deductive reasoning diluted with stream of consciousness is >a tiresome
>exercise.
Reasoning is a tiresome exercise for you? That's too bad. :P I'll strive not
to imitate your style then, nor your sesquipedalian mode d'�criture (except
in overtly subtle pasticheousness, of course).
- gLeN
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