Hi Jens,
> This is not correct: /-d/ and /-t/ are not interchangeable
> (neutralized) in PIE,
They are listed as separate phonemes.
>but they are in Indo-Iranian and in Italic.
But if you take the case of a voiced vowel becoming voiceless at
the end of a word, you will end up with lots of languages on the
list. Isn't this simply a case of allophones and why should this
exculsively concern the phoneme-system of PIE? Some of ths
discussion puzzles me somewhat. It could be simply that I did
not manage to follow the thread from the beginning.
> > And I don't want to petty about the vowel quantity because it is
> > observed to be short as Eva has even kindly pointed out.
I have not pointed it out. At first it was a joke and self-irony, then
I just ended up with another question in my mind. The vowel in
Abl. Sg. m/n is long, but it does include a thematic vowel plus /a/,
or it could be an /a:/. Sanskrit alone, I guess, does not allow any
conclusions on the length of the vowel. Hence my questions
stated in another email. Not to mention that, I am wondering why
this particular ending in Abl. Sg. is taken as indicative of the
ending in PIE. I would appreciate any ideas.
Eva