On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, P&G wrote:
> > > > Would you say Latin was well-nigh a 3-vowel (/a/, /e/, /o/)
> > language?
> > > I suppose I would.
>
> I wouldn't.
Well, the question was, would we say Latin was well-nigh a 3-vowel
language?
I don't think we disagree about any real facts, so this is all about when
to use the adverb "well-nigh". I presume you are a native speaker of
English which I am not, so if you say it does not apply, that's good
enough for me. Then some other adverbial phrase should be used to express
the closeness of Latin to being a language with complementary distribution
of [i] and [j], of [u] and [v], and of [VV] and [V:]. I'm sure it would be
misleading to replace "well-nigh" with "to no extent at all".
Jens