Re: [tied] All of creation in Six and Seven

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <petegray@...> wrote:

>
> > >To which one might argue that whoever designed Latin orthography
> > >didn't want a stem to alternate as much as *-em, *-in-, and

therefore

> > >made an allowance for "etymological spelling" in such cases.
>
> Latin orthography was not "designed" in that sense, but reflects

the actual

> pronunciation at a certain period, and changed as the pronunciation

changed.

It was to be taken in a loose sense. All orthographies for inflecting
languages have to choose between phonological and etymological
spelling.

> Therefore if an original *-em *-in- stem noun were altered to -en -

in-, it

> would be speakers who did it, and the cause would be analogical

levelling.

> But there is no evidence for such a paradigm (*-em *-in-) and a lot

of

> evidence against it. So I think we're stuck with Latin

distinguishing PIE

> *m. from PIE *n. like it or not.
>

I didn't propose *-em-, *-in- stems. I proposed *-e~- *-in- stems,
_written_ *-em-, *-in-. There are other languages around with nasal
vowels not having seperate letters.

Torsten