I said:
>>To explain the IE reflexes as independent nasalization is far more
>>extravagant than the consensus solution.
Torsten:
>Independent? Of what?
>A thought experiment: All Romance langauges become extinct. You find
>a Portuguese inscription sg. homem, pl homens. Now reconstruct the
>root. That will of course be *homem- (you have no chance of knowing
>the h- is mute). The -ns of the plural will "in all likelihood" be
>derived from -ms.
The thought experiment failed because it is irrelevant to our actual
knowledge of IE languages or even languages in general. We know ALOT more
than Portuguese so one need not pull a blanket over everyone. There are many
diverse IE languages where *-m is found as is (eg: Latin, Sanskrit) and this
just couldn't be the case unless the accusative was *-m to begin with (not
*n, not *a~, not silent *q or *e). So we are forced to reconstruct *-m for
the accusative because anything else would be needlessly more complex and it
wouldn't follow known sound laws as well. What exactly are you suggesting?
Do you want *a~ instead? What exactly?
- gLeN
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