Miguel:
>If you're saying that at a very remote stage, before PIE, there
>was an extra syllable, and that the final vowels were dropped,
>I agree.
Alright, fine.
>But I guess that what you're saying is that there was an extra
>vowel only where we have ultimate accent in PIE, and there was no
>extra vowel when there is penultimate accent in PIE.
Whoa! You're misunderstanding! You're assuming that this rule is
an absolute rule and I'm not saying that since I don't believe
in absolute rules. I believe in logically efficient rules that
solve the _most_ with one stone. You're looking for silly panacaeas
again.
No, not every morpheme showing ultimate accent MUST have had a
final vowel at one time because this would be unnecessarily
assumptive -- Not all morphemes are likely to date to this preIE
stage (which I call late Mid IE or lMIE). I've already stated for
instance that many suffixes have been created in later eLIE via a
"thematic insert", making animate *-&x (> *-ax) out of inanimate
*-x or animates *-&n (> *-on-) and *-&r (>*-or-) out of syllabic
inanimates *-n and *-r. You're deglecting this.
>There *is* a simple and elegant solution to this problem... All
>_root_ nouns and verbs have ultimate accent (penultimate at an
>earlier stage with final vowels).
So you actually think that it is more logical to assume an
"ultimate accent stage" when the accusative case, which we can
both agree is an ancient suffix, VIOLATES your rule for ALL root
nouns?! Sorry, I get off at this stop...
- gLeN
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