I'll have to sum up all the issues into one post as briefly as
possible because the posts in the past few days while interesting
are getting out of hand in their sheer quantity and length.
On pre-IE and IE typology
-------------------------
Jens:
> The typology of one-vowel IE is like Sanskrit. How can Indo-
> Europeanists dismiss the sheer possibility of that?
Both the "monovocalism" of Sanskrit and the "monovocalism" of IE
do not necessarily show that their previous stages had only one
vowel. In fact, we know with Sanskrit that *a is a merger of
previous *e, *o and *a and that such an assumption is in fact
misguided. Likewise, that IE might be analysed as technically
"monovocalic" means nothing to the question of the shape of the
pre-IE vowel system. In fact, since sensible linguists are bound
by language universals to reconstruct protolanguages properly,
might we please keep remembering that one-vowel systems are
_NON-EXISTENT_. It's not even considerable.
On the question of *do:m/*dems/*demos
-------------------------------------
The very fact that *o oscillates with *e shows that the accent
can only have shifted to another syllable as we find in a
plethora of examples such as verbs with *o-vocalism which have
*e in the plural when that syllable is unstressed, *wodr versus
*wednós and *po:ds with *pedós. Might I reemphasize that we
find _*pedós_ and _*wednós_ amply attested and that fact can't be
ignored because of idle assumptions that IE speakers made a
mistake and really meant **peds and **wedens instead. No, more
than likely, the theorist who asserts this made a mistake.
Now, it would be impossible for the accent to go to another syllable
unless the correct preform of *dems was *demós. This then implies that
*demós was contracted to *dems later, sometime in the Late IE period,
presumably based on an unstressed form of the genitive as would be
found in set phrases turned compounds like *dems-potis < *demos-pótis.
So everything about IE tells us that *demós is the logical preform of
*dems and that the latter popped up any time after Syncope. Similarly,
the genitive of *nokWts would be *nekWtós while *nekWts must be a
later contracted form which coincidentally is only attested in
Hittite in the phrase /nekuz mehhur/. Does it exist outside this phrase?
To insist on an unmotivated, shortened genitive for all or any
*t-substantives is really to fly against the evidence which conclusively
shows *-ós through and through. Afterall, it's on the model of these
genitives of *t-substantives that participles in *-tós may have first
been formed.
On peaceful Forum conduct
-------------------------
Richard:
>P.S. I don't need to address this to the ladies - all the rudeness
>has come from men!
You're right, Richard. I will endeavor to follow the example of
post-Anatolian IE, striving to be less 'animate' and more 'feminine'
in the future... hehehe >:) I know, I know, that pun was wrong on
many levels. That's why I couldn't resist.
On the farce called "idem"
--------------------------
Peter:
>Jens' analysis is right, Glen. There's a lot of rearrangement going
>on. [...] With the loss of the final d on ablatives, the pairs
> eo / eodem and ea / eadem
>arose so eodem was re-analysed as eo-dem, and eadem as ea-dem.
Fine, but this still skirts around a direct question I bluntly asked
days and days ago:
WHAT IS THE RECONSTRUCTED IE FORM????
Wake me up when you found it. In regards to the issue of Final Voicing
of *-t to *-d in Late IE, the very reason why this was brought up in
the first place, I just can't be bothered confronting this supposed
'counterevidence' that apparently doesn't even exist! That this was
even brought up without clear foundation is insulting to anyone's
intelligence.
There, I think that was all the important issues raised so far that
I needed to deal with.
= gLeN