The palatal sham :) (Re: [tied] Re: Albanian (1))

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

> > It seems like your entire basis for seperating *e and *o on the

one hand

> > and *a on the other is because of an assumption that *a doesn't

partake in

> > ablaut.
>
> Whoohah! There's an exciting idea! As always, I'm squished for

time, and

> can't chase it up as fully as I'd like - but off the top of my

head, I'd

> assert that:
> (a) PIE *a appears as /a/ throughout the IE languages (except in

B-S where

> it is altered to /o/);
> (b) Any suggested cases of *a ~ zero are going to be few, and

open to

> other interpretations. There may be a handful, as suggested

already on

> this list, but nothing like the regular patterning of e~o~zero.
> (c) Alternations of a ~ o are chimaerae.
>
> Now, as always, I'm happy to see evidence showing that I'm wrong.

But I

> suspect that the best we could find would be a handful of

disputable cases.

> Ofcourse, I'm talking about the latest stage of PIE, not

anything

> earlier where ephemeral /a/'s may have come and gone alternating

with

> anthing you like.
>

This is how one could fit it into an 'all /a/'s are loans' theory.

p-PIE has vowels [i, ablaut a/ä/nothing, u]
its daughter Old European has [i, a/nothing, u]
its other daughter PIE has [i, e/o/nothing, the 'foreign' vowel a, u]

Roots in PIE that alternate a/nothing are loans from Old European.
Roots in PIE that alternate a/o are mix-ups up of loans from Old
European with native PIE roots.

Torsten