Re: [tied] Re: a-Epenthesis: This time its personal

Jens:

> It can very well be true *without* your acceptance.

It has to be accepted with _fact_. The End. Otherwise
you may as well drop acid with your hippy friends.

>> Yes, and this is where my views against pre-IE _initial_
>> consonant clustering largely derive.
>
> Then you do *not* take the IE root to be monosyllabic?
> I'm not sure how to understand your English here.

I do *not* take every *Mid IE* root to be monosyllabic.
For example, while *kwon- is monosyllabic in PIE, it
cannot be monosyllabic in Mid IE where we need *kawana
based on Penultimate Accent and Syncope.

> It's not much, and it may not even be good, agreed, but
> it's all we've got. I don't think we have *anything*
> going against it.

I can concede that you may or may not be right. But to
say "it's all we've got" is certainly like issue a decree,
your charge against me! It's not all we got. We have
other ideas. Piotr is giving input and I am too. And no
doubt there are other theories in print that I haven't
come across yet in my own ignorance.

> No, no, no. It is not logical to make default
> generalizations based on *lack* of evidence.

Simplicity is logical. The antithesis of this would
be chaos and unnecessary complexity. It seems you're
confusing reality and theory and confusing
"generalizations" opposing facts that already exist
to refute such generalizations versus logically
siding with simplicity until added complexity is
needed. So, yes, it IS logical and the onus remains
on you to find exceptions to the general rule.

>If you don't know, you can't tell!

We don't know any which way so why would you side
with complexity in your own ignorance??

> But I claim that this has changed with the -o-
> element which tells us where the first vowel of
> the root is, and that is always in the same spot
> as the full-grade vowel.

I hear your claim. However within the contexts of my
own views on Mid/Late IE, your claim surfaces a little
differently than you expect or may have intended.
Within my theories, your *O-fix must in fact predate
Vowel Shift, meaning that it is a misnomer: it is an
*a-fix. Secondly it occurs during a time with different
phonotactics than Reconstructed IE. None of these
things are accounted for in your *O-fix theory.
Instead, you illogically impose the same rules on
this Pre-IE stage as they exist in Reconstructed IE,
not giving thought to the overbearing likelihood that
things were in fact a little different. This, I feel,
can help account for why the phonetics of your *O
are a little awkward -- they are ultimately an
illusion.

> I can't find g'ffawed in my dictionary. What is it in
> the infinitive?

No need for definition when you provide the above example.

> Mention an example, please. I don't know of any examples of
> an alternation between CVCC and CCVC as two forms of a
> root appearing in the same paradigm.

*trep-/*terp- for example but not within a single paradigm
per se.

> But that actually is immaterial if we are talking about
> clusters *before* the (surfacing) root vowel. To settle
> that question we seem to have *only* the evidence of the
> o-infix. And why assume the opposite of what little
> indication we do have?

Please don't confuse pre- and post-Syncope stages. Your
O-fix must be post-Syncope (or perhaps during, and
a reflex of, Syncope according to my latest up-and-coming
explanation).


= gLeN