Re: [tied] Ablaut and accent

On Wed, 23 Apr 2003, Glen Gordon wrote:

> Jens:
> >Outside of the main debate: Armenian has final stress, but still
> >accepts words like tasn, eLungn, ezr, astL. Surely such a language
> >should not be alarming to Indo-Europeanists.
>
> No, I don't find it alarming. I find it exceeeeeedingly unlikely.
> Further it gets frustrating when I have to object to these rules,
> only to have a hundred people down my throat saying that this
> rule is _possible_. Well I'm not fighting against the "possibility".
> I'm fighting against the _stupidity_ because this possibility is
> the _least_ possible from which we can choose... so why choose it??
>
> Miguel's version of preIE shows a strong tendency to take all the
> more unlikely rules, out of novelty's sake, to reconstruct a preIE
> conlang that he can appreciate. Back to reality however, *dekm would
> be counted as _two_ syllables more often than one in most languages.
> In fact, IE itself counts it as two, not one, and I can't imagine
> a disyllabic *dekm deriving from ONE syllable given the phonetics
> involved here. So I don't get where Miguel's head is at at all.

Hey, that's not fair. Miguel is of course prevented from responding with
any weight, so I feel I have to say that, even if I frequently disagree
with Miguel's suggestions, I can always see what he is driving at. There
is a point to be taken - or rejected by counterarguments, or to be thought
about. That is no proper object of ridicule, but rather an example to
follow.

Jens