Jens:
> I don't know, I wasn't asked. However I can observe that the sonant
> is sometimes missing (surely this cannot be news to you):
I don't know, I guess I always assumed that these disappearances
were post-IE. I've never seen this alternation of *-o:r/*o:
reconstructed in IE itself. I'm sure it would if there was damn
good reason to, so I presume there isn't.
> There appears to be no rationale for loss or preservation of the
> stem-final sonants in the nominatives, so PIE must have offered the
> opportunity for the daughter languages to inherit both forms. That
> amount to a protolanguage with variation, either erratic or somehow
> regulated.
Interesting but I'm not sure how this could make sense of anything.
We'd need some sensible rule to understand why such a variation
existed... _if_ it existed. Sounds like more wild conjecture.
However, given your examples, maybe it's worth looking into the
possible, murky rules of IE sandhi. If it were sandhi then, it
still doesn't mean that the stem lacks these sonants in the
nominative, but rather that in colloquial speech they were omitted
based on a context and rules external to the stem as it would be
found in isolation.
Nominative loss as a result of sandhi would be outside of the topic
of nominative loss within the stem itself. */Tod ?so:nts estne/?
= gLeN