Jens to Miguel about the quality of IE *o:
>Are you applying Brugmann's law to a prestage of the IE protolanguage? Did
>PIE *d�r-u, *g^�n-u have a longer vowel than *H3�d-os 'smell', *H3�kW-iH1
>'eyes'?
I find this idea absurd thus far although I'm still listening to this
debate. I don't
see why *o must be long, both in respect to the IE vowel system as we know
it and in terms of the overall evidence of daughter languages which affirm
that it is short except in _exceptional_ circumstances like the Law we are
discussing. To say that *o is long causes an unstoppable chain-reaction
that forces us to further explain ad absurdum what instances of *o: could
possibly be and why it's on a par with *e: even though *e: should be
shorter.
This is fruitless imagination at its best.
It appears to me to be a continuing pattern of Miguel's to solve problems
which
aren't there. Maybe it's also worth mentioning that *o is obviously
different
from *e in the respect of labiality and so this extra quality may have
affected
the reason for a labial-marked *o becoming /a:/ rather than an unmarked *e.
In other words, a kind of shift from labial-marking to length-marking. An
exchange of one quality for another.
= gLeN
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