Jens about mouse/mice, ablaut, and deceptive new words:
> I don't see the relevance,
I hope one day you get it.
> You need it to be the *only* thing that happens, and that
> is absurd.
I don't need anything to happen. I'm admitting that
*wertmn _could_ be ancient but also _not necessarily_.
I don't think that assuming that this word is ancient
in order to make a logical arguement is rational. We
can see clearly that *wertmn is immediately divisible
into *wert- and *-mn. Therefore its etymology is
transparent and likely to be recent.
So the optimal view until proven otherwise is that
*wertmn is _not_ sufficiently ancient. Its ablaut, as
I've shown with mouse/mice and other examples that
you refuse to absorb, does not show anything conclusive
in favour of its true age. Its mediopassiveness also
makes it suspect but since you think the middle can
be extended into the far reaches of preIE, you don't
see this.
If the word is postSyncope, *wertmn could be based on
another word with the same pattern that DID survive
Syncope, a word like *kwo:ns, so I don't know how you're
saying that I've been proven false.
> I get my head blown off if I take the liberty to be more
> specific than our actual knowledge permits. With "something
> like *´-mon-s" I mean something so *very* like *´-mon-s that
> we cannot tell the difference.
Alright. So we agree to an extent: *-m&n-s?
> It is VERY unfair that you stoop to misusing this in an
> effort to make a fool of me.
I'm not interested in making fools of anyone. I'm only
interesting (obsessed, if you will) in pursuing ideas to
their extreme limit and questioning to the end. By the way,
happy fools day. I know that I'll be celebrating <:)
> You get a much more natural explanation of that if you
> leave out the unmotivated vowel of the ending. Of course a
> vowelless ending does not undergo syncopation of anything.
Natural is evidently in the eye of the beholder.
The most optimal etymology for *-s happens to be from a
demonstrative. I see no other etymology that is as satisfying.
The genitive-nominative connection is, afaic, too heavily
dependent on the mere phonetic resemblance of the two suffixes
and doesn't do anything to explain the animacy contrast
between *-s and *-d in pronominal stems. It can't just be
pushed aside with more weak phonetic invokings of ablative
*-od perhaps. Since *-s/*-d mirrors the contrast of *so and
*tod in both form AND function, the conclusion is that *-s
must indeed derive from *-s& (an affixed demonstrative *sa
> IE *so) just as the inanimate *-d is derived from *-t&.
The vowel is necessary because its origin demands this.
This creates a snowball of further conclusions that explain
better IE. For example, since it's safe to say that
inanimate *-d < *-t&, then the ablative *-od may also derive
from *-Vt&. In fact, QAR and the accentuation of *-od
doubly supports this conclusion. We then solve a problem that
Bomhard briefly laments in "IndoEuropean and the Nostratic
Hypothesis" concerning the precise relationship, if any, of
IE *-od and Uralic *-ta. With the above, we see that there
is a relationship and their phonetic differences can now be
completely resolved. The snowball after this involves more
accurate connections between IE and Uralic.
We now have a transparent and more natural solution than
what can be arrived at by your point of departure.
> Do you have any underlyingly asyllabic endings in your
> pre-PIE morphology at all?
No. Is that bad? Does Japanese have asyllabic endings?
> I see nothing unexpected here for I do not fill the
> preforms full of unobserved vowels.
The vowels are necessary to explain the origin of these
suffixes properly. If we ignore them, it gets silly.
The etymologies that I propose are also transparent
to see.
> I do not think the loss of the nominative marker after
> long vowel + certain sonants (n,r,y) is irregular.
Well I suppose but it is an irregularity in relation to
the expectation of having *-s everywhere. Since we don't
find *-s everywhere, it is irregular in that manner of
speaking.
Actually, let's talk about it, because I have yet to
understand where this loss of *-s is coming from. It only
disappears after certain voiced sounds but not all.
I don't see a natural phonemic class out of {*n, *r, *y}
other than that they are continuants, but then why
isn't *w in this? How do you make it any more regular
with *-z?
> The thematic class is not restricted to words of a
> particular phonotactic built, so there is no basis for this.
This is the resulting conclusion based on the rules I so
far have which I know you don't accept. Hmm. This is
going to be tough.
>> So *-mon- < *-m&n- is an animate variant of *-mn.
>
> It does not make sense to say that of a particular
> allomorph.
Why not?
> All of this was perfectly well acounted for already.
I don't think it was. There's too much mathematics in
what you say, and not enough linguistics.
= gLeN