Me:
> At last! Proof of my sanity, if I ever should need it :)
> Everything I'm proposing for Pre-IE seems to exist
> elsewhere in eery detail.
Jens:
> You have simply made up your Pre-IE of changes that are
> all seen somewhere, we knew that already.
Yes, but I didn't. That is, while I try to make MIE as
credible a language as possible by using straightforward
rules, there are some rules that I've ascertained which
I didn't know existed elsewhere. So it was a surprise
when I found "e-Epenthesis" even with a similar name as
my MIE a-Epenthesis in Modern Hebrew. That's all. Carry
on :)
> Still, that is *very* far from constituting proof that
> the selection of "parallels" is adequate for the history
> to be uncovered here.
It demonstrates that my rules operate under a strong sense
of linguistic normalcy overall. This is the effect we
want when reconstructing a language properly unless
for whatever reason more bizarre rules are needed to
explain things. However, more uncommon rules should be the
exception, not the norm. O-fixing and double-long vowels
seem to seep into all aspects of your pre-IE, making it
more bizarre than it is normal because they are much
less common processes. With O-fixing, I don't even
know what real-world language operates like this and
I can only think of Lapp and Mingo as having double-long
vowels.
> You can find other languages that do different things
> with tri-consonantal clusters; [...]
> How did you decide that none of all that constitutes
> a parallel to your pre-PIE?
It turns out that a CV(C) syllable structure works best
for MIE because of the logical path I take, starting
with the observation of Syncope and following it to QAR.
We haven't begun to adequately talk about QAR because
we can't seem to agree on Syncope yet.
However, I think that there is a good case to propose a
similar CV(C) syllable structure for Semitic. Observing
loans between MIE and Semitic help us see how both languages
worked in more detail at that time. Semitic accent is
turning out to be cool too. You say that "six" in Semitic
doesn't have a vowel at the end of it in the non-mimated
feminine form but it would violate CV(C) and would rob
us of the necessary case determining vowel important in
Semitic morphology. Double no-no. So I think *s^idc^u as
the form cited to MIE speakers is more sensible over
*s^idc^. So we should accept that the MIE speakers were
inputted the word _with_ a final vowel. What they did
with this final vowel is still a debate with us, but
it's simpler to conclude that they just accepted the
final vowel and didn't do anything to it until Syncope,
hence MIE *sWeksa.
= gLeN