[tied] Re: Unreality of One-Vowel Systems (was: Bader's article on

From: elmeras2000
Message: 32917
Date: 2004-05-25

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:

> Therefore, I object to anyone who tries to reason that if IE can
> be analysed as underlyingly monovocalic (which may or may not be
> justified in itself) then that implies that pre-IE must have had
only
> one vowel.

No, that's a complete distortion of your own conduct in message
32876: You expressly excluded the *possibility* of monovocalic
systems. In no uncertain terms you wrote: "one-vowel systems are
_NON-EXISTENT_. It's not even considerable."

I take the singular "it" to refer to "one-vowel systems" as a
phenomenon or to the acceptance of such. I also take the last word
to mean "open for consideration". I may be wrong, that meaning
of 'considerable' not being in my dictionaries. But I don't see what
else it could mean. It certainly cannot mean what you now style it
to say:

> No. This is absurd. It's illogical assumption. It does
> not imply such a thing.

I have never made such an assumption, I only refuse to exclude it
before the matter is looked into. While there is no particular
reason to assume that a prestage of PIE is just like PIE itself,
thus there is no a priori reason to exclude that that could be that
case in a given point.

> I see you doing just that, Jens, and it irks
> my sense of reasoning because there is a gap that is not being
filled.

I feel little guilt being thus irksome. And I leave it to others to
make out where the gap is.

Jens