I just want to say that I don't mean to boil your blood,
Jens. It's the nature of my confrontational character.
Let's chalk it up to inexperienced youth. But dammit,
excuse me if I have a mission to ask questions! >:)
Me:
>> 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.
Jens:
> But you do take the surfacing root vowel to be the last
> vowel of the root, right?
? You've lost me now. All I've been saying for the
past few years now should be quite simple to understand
right from the get-go unless you've been stubbornly
dismissing it, which I suspect you have... Excellent, you're
just as stubborn as I am. We're in like company :)
We use Penultimate Accentuation and Syncope as the founding
rules to reconstruct Mid IE from PIE. So if a word ends in
an accented syllable (or it is monosyllabic like *kwon-
which can't help but end in an accented syllable) then
it indicates a lost syllable after the accent. One simple
vowel, lost during Syncope, suffices to accomodate this lost
syllable. By readding the syncoped vowel, the accentuation
of both protero- and hysterodynamic patterns automatically
reunites into a common, _transparent_ system where
accentuation always falls on the penult. Just by adding a
single vowel.
So...
> But you do take the surfacing root vowel to be the last
> vowel of the root, right?
So, when you ask if I "take the surfacing root vowel to be
the last vowel of the root", I'd have to say no in most
cases if I understand correctly what you're getting at.
With *kwon-, its alternation with *kun-os indicates an
earlier vowel after *n in that root. The *o is not the
last vowel originally. The quality or existence of the
root vowel has no bearing on the last vowel of the root
in Mid IE.
> Only you are not always sure it is the only vowel of
> the root?
I am sure. The accent indicates where the vowels are
unless the accent has been modified by Acrostatic
Regularisation, analogy, or other post-MIE
morphological rules on accentuation.
> All serious ideas I have seen relating to is have been
> ancillary to it, taking the correctness of the o-infix
> theory as a given. Such ideas disappear if the o-infix
> is wrong.
I never said it was. It may or may not be correct, but
I've stated that I agree with it (although not with your
consonant value or your reasons for its existence).
It's still not all we've got. That's overstatement.
>> Simplicity is logical. The antithesis of this would
>> be chaos and unnecessary complexity.
>
> By what standards is it simpler to assume that there is
> more in the root than we can see, than it is to assume
> that there is not?
As stated, by using Syncope and Penultimate Accent, most
accent patterns are automatically _simplified_ and their
accent predictable. So it *is* simpler by this very standard.
After applying the rules, the only thing left to consider
seriously is Acrostatic accent. However this pattern is
so unflawed and regular that it can only have been
introduced rather late, and in order to alleviate what
one would have expected to be an unusual alternation of
accent between two different syllables _within_ a stem.
Acrostatic Regularisation is positioned after Syncope but
before Schwa Diffusion (*& -> *&. before voiced segments)
and heralds what might be described as Stage III phonotactics,
the period that finally allows strong stems with not only
unaccented reduced syllables but accented ones at that
(eg: wlkWo- "wolf").
> I see no evidence contradicting the general rule that the
> root was monosyllabic.
This is an OVERsimplification now. Yes, there are many
much-used verb roots that show what was probably always
monosyllabicity such as *bHer- and *?es- but this cannot
be the case for phonetically more complex roots like *ple?-
or *deik- outside of the latest IE stage based on the
Penultimate Accent Rule (MIE *pale?-a & *t:eik-a). Rather,
Syncope had reduced these roots to monosyllabic ones,
changing the rules of morphology in that stage of IE.
We can deny *kwon- and claim weakly that it was a "suffixed
stem" for your convenience, but it doesn't account for every
other stem that shows a similar pattern as *kwon-, words
like *glo:us or *nepo:ts, for example, which also require
final vowels in MIE (*k:alahWa & *nepata).
Are they all "suffixed stems" too? Will you find complex,
ad hoc ways to dismiss all this evidence out of turn as
well?
> There may however be evidence to indicate that the
> stem of *k^uon- was not a root, but a suffixed stem.
> That would be one way of explaining the -o-.
Again, simplicity is logical. There is no motivation to
explain a self-evident *o.
>> We don't know any which way so why would you side
>> with complexity in your own ignorance??
>
> I wouldn't if I didn't have evidence, but I do.
I must reiterate the context of your above quote: We
are talking about consonant clusters. You have no
evidence regarding consonant clusters. Rather, you
keep on reinvoking your O-fix decree without any guilt
of irony. I don't see how the rule explains consonant
clusters in general like that of *kwon- "dog" or
*stex- "to stand", let's say. However Penultimate
Accentuation and Syncope explain what's happened in
these instances.
>> Secondly it occurs during a time with different
>> phonotactics than Reconstructed IE.
>
> You don't say?! So maybe that's why the phonotactics
> changed??
I'm not trying to boil your blood. Du calme.
I'm merely underlining the fact that we need to not
only accept that the stage we're dealing with had
different rules, but to discover WHAT rules it had.
You state nothing about those rules, and nothing on
how it relates to the larger context of this pre-IE
stage, not just in relation to your O-fix rule. An
O-fix rule as you leave it doesn't suffice in my books
if it isn't woven fully into the matrix of earlier IE.
Apologies, but this is what I attempt to do.
> I would assume anything for which there is evidence.
> Give me some! Failing that, I go by simplicity.
>[...]
> Do you know anything about my views on its phonetics?
> If you do, what is so awkward (if only a little) about
> them?
You go by _complexity_ because the accent is not as
transparent in your views, nor is the phonology which
now requires a mysterious *R, rare double-long vowels
and a phoneme *z! To add further insult to hyperbole,
you don't even have clear rules on phonotactics. You
reiterate the analysis of your O-fix rule, which I accept,
but without explaining convincingly why it occured in
the first place without more "likely stories".
I suppose you will say that simplicity, like beauty, is
in the eye of the beholder but I'd much rather take a
less artistic, more scientific view of linguistics.
> The metathesis is pre-syncope, and the laryngeal-deleting
> effect and the vocalization are post-syncope. That ought
> to be obvious.
Well, I have more to say on it because I've shuffled my
Syncope down a few steps. Yes, Saussure is post-Syncope,
we agree, but now I view a-Epenthesis/O-fix as a phonotactic
remedy against encroaching "closed" or "weak" vowels and
Clipping has now become a pointless name. This means that
Syncope and a-Epenthesis are around the same time. Yes,
I guess we can now agree technically that a-Epenthesis
precedes Syncope but barely so.
I'll type out my post on this view now so we can all be on
the same page of where I'm coming from.
= gLeN