--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:
> Jens:
> > It is a well-known, if
> > tenacious, fallacy that *some* clusters have come about by
> > loss of intervening vowels.
Sorry, I fouled up a sentence here. I meant: It's a proven fact that
some clusters have come about by loss of intervening vowels, but
it's a well-known, if tenacious, fallacy -
> > [-] to assume the
> > same for all other clusters.
[Glen:]
> Again, to think that some initial clusters are NOT from syncope
> while others plainly are needs more effort to substantiate and I
don't
> think that it can be. I haven't heard of anyone being succesful at
that
> arguement so far.
You just changed the subject so as to cover only *initial* clusters,
and that may be hard to decide about one way or the other. But for
non-initial clusters the inference is patently wrong. If the mere
fact that *some* clusters have been caused by syncope (ablaut, zero-
grade) is taken as valid reason to insist that *all other* clusters
have also lost a vowel between any two consonants, then this turns
out to be not a simplifying, but a heavily complicating assumption.
If you reason as reported, you cannot accept that a stem consisting
of root *per- + suffix *-tew- forms a strong case like nom.sg. *pér-
tu-s and a gen.sg. *pr.-téw-s. Still, that plainly is the way the
word for 'ford, bridge, fjord' alternates. Now, if the nominative
*pér-tu-s has lost a vowel between -r- and -t-, why does the
addition of a longer desinence not cause the accent to move onto it
in the weak cases? And why does such a thing just *never* happen in
IE morphology?
The same with suffixless formations: Why does Sanskrit
dvés.t.i 'hates' form 3pl dvis.ánti? In IE *dwéys-ti, *dwis-énti the
root is *dweys-, which to you must be older *dVweyVs(V)-. When the
ending is added the accent moves, sure, but why does it skip the
vowels you fantasize about? That is a grossly complicating factor in
your grammar. Why in fact do *all* roots move the accent out of them
onto a suffix or desinence when the accent moves? Why does the
accent *never* move to any vowel postulated by you if that is also
in the root? That demands an explanation in your system. If instead
you make your system by what you see, and all of it, you will see
that the simplest system is one that does not insist on the
existence of such unmotivated vowels. If the elements of the quoted
items are *per-, *-tew-, *dweys-, *-ent-, you get *pér-tu-s/*pr.-téw-
s, *dwéys-ti/*dwis-énti without any complications.
Now, admittedly, that says nothing about *initial* clusters. But you
have blasted out the credo that unknown things must be assumed to be
just like the things we believe we know about, - the only simple
way. But in that case initial clusters must also be assumed to
sometimes be just what they look like, namely clusters, also
underlyingly, for that is what we have now come to know about some
clusters in other positions.
There is however the important generalization that the IE root was
monosyllabic when the ablaut worked. That may be an
oversimplification, and it could theoretically be right or wrong,
but to assume without any possibility of checking that it is wrong
is an unmotivated complication; still, it could be right. Now, with
the advent of the o- prefix-turned-infix we do get an opportunity to
check it, and we see that the assumption of the monosyllabicity of
the root is correct, at least as far as it matters.
> > And if you take the consequence of that and only take earlier
vowels
> > for granted where alternants show them, you get a much smoother
> > morphology and accentology.
>
> It depends what you call smooth. Such a new theory would completely
> sever ties with Uralic and Tyrrhenian. We'd up with a meaningless
> mathematical view of pre-IE, no more correct than a monovocalic
> pre-Sanskrit.
Quite the contrary, if we make unsubstantiated generalizations and
even disregard differences we can observe, we are pretty sure to
make real mistakes.
That is not a new theory, come on! The old silliness of writing in
vowels where they don't belong, the old passtime of Møller,
Pedersen, Hjelmslev and Borgstrøm, now continued by Fulk, is not
used by any serious Indo-Europeanists today. That, however, is not a
criterion for determining its wrongness, but the arguments I have
given are. I have never seen an argument in its favour..
>
> > It is proved that way by the simple observation that, when the
> > accent moves from a root-vowel it never moves to a later position
> > within the root, but always out of the root. That means there was
> > only one vowel in the root.
>
> Perhaps you forgot about *peku and genitive *pekeu-s and all other
nouns
> that likewise follow this pattern?
The genitive of Skt. pas'ú is pas'vás. By Szemerényi's rules
relating to the two types of i- and u-stem inflections, there should
be no vowel between the *-k^- and the *-w- in this stem. There is
actually no noun at all following the pattern you cite. In the stem
*pek^-w- the accent does move to the next vowel when it lands in *-w-
ós in the genitive, that was the whole point in Szemerényi's
reasoning.
> > That says that we can know what we see, no more.
>
> Tell that to quantum physicists and geneticists.
I am sure they will all insist that they only assume what they can
see makes a difference somewhere. You don't show such inhibitions
when you insist that initial clusters have vowels in them that would
catch my infix and move it to a different place from where I find
it.
Jens