Jens:
>I do believe I understand them, I just don't think the analysis is
>correct. It is hard to specify the underlying vowel of *H3re:g^-s since
>it never alternates
Sorry, I forgot the *h3-. I'm so used to the old reconstruction of
*reg- that my mind keeps omitting it. At any rate, *hWreg- doesn't
need to alternate. We see that *pod- does alternate with *ped-
as a direct result of accent changes within the paradigm.
Now that fact would almost seem to suggest that *e and *o
alternate as one vowel, however since we can't claim that *e in
*hWreg- is the result of accent (since it would have to be
_unaccented_ in *hWre:gs to comply with the pattern seen with
*pedos), we are forced to conclude that there _is_ an important
and undismissable contrast in IE between *e and *o. We must
conclude that simple C(C)VC- roots themselves can contain BOTH
*e and *o. Therefore *e and *o are distinct and neither IE, nor its
immediate ancestor, are monovocalic.
There are of course also *o-presents alongside *e-presents that
can't be explained by assuming that the two vowels are the
same!
We can chit-chat about "what if, what if, what if" all we want but
these are the present facts that suggest that there is a distinction
until further evidence (not "what-if" scenarios) can contradict this.
- gLeN
_________________________________________________________________
Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail