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

>the perfect of *mad- or *kap-
> nobody could provide more info. So I assumed that it was
> an open possibility that *a could alternate with *o.

Given that there is no evidence (on your own admission) that assumption is
not warranted.

>I can't
> imagine why a language would just alternate *e and not *a too.

That was my point originally - /a/ is different from the ablauting vowel,
and does not ablaut.

> Since based on all other world languages a language MUST have a
> low vowel to balance out high ones, we know that IE DID have *a.

Yes, and we knowits distribution, and that it didn't ablaut.

> So, why wouldn't *a alternate with *o in ablaut? In English ...

Your English examples show that in English /a/ can ablaut, but they don't
prove that in PIE it must have done.

Peter