Re: [tied] Unreality...

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

>
> You wish to equate patterns seen in IE and those seen in Sanskrit
> together as if they are equal

No. Never did that, never said I would.

> but this remains misleading.

Yes, it would be.

> For
> one thing, in Sanskrit /e/ and /o/ can be reduced to diphthongs
> with *a such that everything is almost perfectly 'monovocalic'.

Yes.

> Alright. As I said, this is a misnomer since, with /i/ and /u/, the
> language was never such a thing but no matter, we can do this if it
> titulates us so and get away with it, I guess.

Titillates? Emotions have no place in this. You must accept the
possibility even if it disgusts you.

> In IE, things are a little different and that minute difference
> matters.

Certainly, and it varies with the definition of the cover-term "IE".

> For example, you say there is a "preponderance of *e" as
> you say and that this is similar to Sanskrit /a/ and yet, if *e
> is from earlier *a, and *o is merely a lengthened version of this
> vowel, then what is *e: and *o:?

Indications strongly advising against the identification of *e and
*o as **a and **a:. I have never called PIE /o/ a lengthened version
of /e/. Others have, but I have not followed them.

> Surely *o is a lengthened version
> of *o... making it an absurd double-long monstrosity

Meaning "Surely *o: is ..."? Then change the part of the theory that
leads you to say this.

> but that
> leaves out *e:. Oh maybe we need a triple-long vowel too.

Maybe we do. For the final stage PIE we do need an
opposition /e/ : /e:/ : /e::/, but the third degree could be noted
as hiatic /ee/. I have not been able to find evidence of an
opposition of length in hiatus, i.e. potentially
contrasting /ee/ : /e:e/ : /ee:/ : /e:e:/,
nor /eo/ : /eo:/ : /oe/ : /oe:/ : /oo/ : /oo:/ : /e:o/ : /e:o:/ : /o:
e/ : /o:e:/ : /o:o/ : /o:o:/. Therefore the circumflex monophthongs
can be simply /ee/ and /oo/.

> Etc, etc,
> etc. It's dumb and doesn't account for the real IE vowel system as
> it appears to be.

Some say that, but I disagree. I may perhaps be allowed to express
my opinion and state my reasons.

> We don't run into this problem in Sanskrit, and this
> is what makes it tough to argue against. The point is, taking away
> /i/ and /u/, Sanskrit really DOES have a single vowel /a/ with a
> long counterpart /a:/ and it's a very elegant solution indeed.

How civil.

> However, you take away IE *i and *u, and you still have *e and *o
> which cannot be the same vowel because we would be led to a
> disorganized view of preIE with a pile of rarities and unicorns.

Not for the many cases of change of /e/ to /o/ which are all /e/ if
projected back to the day before the change occurred. At that time
some other o's were not vowels at all. Apart from a few isolated
cases of apparently fundamental /i/ as the root vowel, the only pre-
apophonic /o/ I know is that of reduplicated verbal stems, as the
perfect, the intensive and the reduplicated aorist (and, some say,
the reduplicated present). If that reflects a sound law it may be
projected back to a stage with unchanged root vowel also, but we
don't know how old that stage would be. That would potentially leave
a two-vowel system for that stage of IE morphophonemics. However, we
were talking about lexically given root vowels, and that's a
different matter altogether.

> As we've discussed earlier, my theory may not be as vocalically
> elegant as you would like because I simply derive *e from earlier
> *e and *o from *a (both with long counterparts as we find in IE),

but

> I avoid many of the unicorns you feel unashamed to theorize.

I do not feel ashamed to tell anybody what I believe I find.
My "unicorns" do not occur simultaneously, by the way. The one-vowel
system only applies to the part of the IE grammar we can see in the
lexicon, which makes it a very abstract concept, but still a true
observation. The trimoric vowels, or hiatic vowel sequences, belong
to output PIE and are directly mirrored in Vedic and Gathic Avestan.
The horror of the extra sibilant belongs to the stage in which the
thematic vowel was split into /e/ and /o/ (or their prestages), not
necessarily to any later period. No two items in this need to be
contemporary.

> The only
> real problem we've found with any unlikelinesses in my account of
> PreIE concern the Final Voicing rule. Even if I accepted *z (which
> I won't) this is still much better than a theory than what you
> offer with this monovocalic nightmare.

The nightmare offered by the monotonous vocalism of PIE roots is
independent of any views about word-final realization of phonemes or
about the number of sibilants to be accepted for different stages of
the prehistory of PIE.

> So this is NOT THE SAME. I've never been able to make sense of how
> your analyses work and you only help the misunderstanding by

purposely

> avoiding any of your pre-IE reconstructions (because you would

only get

> into trouble with your own logic, I suspect, if you were to expose

such

> things). The reconstructions can only be awkward and unlike any

real

> language. Fine for robots but IE speakers didn't know about Pentium
> processors.

But what we can know about it may amount to just that. The
accusation for dodging is not at all fair. In my original
presentation of my IE morphophonemics in 1978 (reprinted 1999) I
added an appendix of 166 wordforms for which I specified each change
they underwent when processed by the phonetic rules I had
formulated. I have changed a few details, but I still hold the main
tenor of that set of rules and their operation to be correct. The
whole presentation was a paper of 85 pages, which I just cannot
reproduce in a posting here. Its general fate has been to remain
unknown. Some have argued against a point or two with terrible
arguments; some have misunderstood the whole idea; some have quoted
an occasional pre-PIE hypothetical form as if it were a foolish PIE
reconstruction; some have used it as a quarry from which to cut
blocks they could present as their own; and a precious few have used
it for constructive purposes with due acknowledgment of its
provenience.

Jens