Re: [tied] Animate Dual in -h3 (was: IE Roots)

Jens:

>PIE stem-final vowels do alternate that way, but is the prestage of
>o/e really one of long vs. short? It may of course be, but how can
>we tell? Why must the explanation not be laborious? Were the
>speakers lazy? Or are you?

I'm only as lazy as Occam was... and that's how we tell. Any other
explanations for the *e/*o alternation (ie blurry tonal theories and
the like) are simply too involved to bother with.

>To show that these are the *only* sources of *e you need to show
>that everything else leads to different results. That is not done in
>a sentence.

I have only needed so far to reconstruct *e and *a in stressed positions
for Mid IE. Schwa is the unstressed variant of *e and *a. This is all to
side with maximum simplicity given the facts versus unjustified complexity.

> > So we therefore know that *e here is from
> > earlier *& and not from full unstressed *e because neither
> > exception applies.
>
>A valid syllogism only if the premise is right.

But since we don't and can't know what is "right" (which would
be an absolute term that isn't appropriate in theoretical linguistics)
we might better say "A valid syllogism only if the premise is the
most logically efficient." I think it is.

>That is not a valid argument. Some languages have convoluted
>systems; don't they come from anywhere?

Yes, there are systems that appear "convoluted" to some, but
what I mean is there is no need to _reconstruct_ a complex
system when there is no basis for it. We have to start with
simplicity otherwise we'll go mad.

>>2) Animatization with thematic vowels
>>----------------------------------------------------
>A funny place to start: the thematic inflection also comprises
>neuters.

No, no. The thematic vowel WITHIN suffixes like *-ax. I'm
using the term in a more liberal way than the "thematic vowel"
that we see in, say, the stem *ekw-o-. However, I feel the
source of these vowels are the same, *&.

>Very many animates are end-stressed, yes; however, then the
>unmarked form appears to be /-er-/. In the collective, *-H2 vs.
>*-aH2 is not a matter of gender at all.

Explain. Examples?

>But the laryngealless dual in *-o:(w) is in my opinion correct;
>that, however, does not exclude the derivation from a form marked by
>*-H3 which may simply have developed this way.

Since I know of no such derivation rules and have not found reason
for them, it is so far excludable on the grounds of Occam's Razor.
Secondly, what is the basis of ANY suffix ending in *-h3, as opposed
to say, *-h2 or *-h1? I'm skeptical of any suffix ending in a labiovelar
or *-h3, personally.


= gLeN

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