Jens:
> You may be right, and we both stand corrected. So, which is it gonna
> be, are your final voicing and my one-vowel system both possible or
> both impossible?
IE doesn't show the one-vowel system you claim. Sure, it comes close
but no cigar. It's just not the same as Sanskrit's situation. There
still are other languages with final voicing of some kind so it's not
an unsalvageable rarity. My theory still has less odd features in it
overall than yours. So I can't accept what you're saying in entirety.
> No, I am not using the one-vowel analysis for anything at all. I
> only responded to a long series of lecturings about its self-evident
> wrongness, statements that fly in the face of observations anyone
> can make. Whether it is right or wrong is of no consequence for any
> of the analyses concerning the growth of IE ablaut and morphological
> peculiarities that I have presented.
It's wrong not only because it's rare. It's wrong because it doesn't
really address the features of IE in a straightforward way and has
led you to other rarities that only add to the unlikeliness of your
account. Right and wrong is always at the heart of these theories since
we only want to get it _right_, don't we?
> Well, if they *did* that, that is what we should find out about
> them. Are we not after the truth? Now, it was not that way, and I'm
> not saying that. The thematic vowel was created under the accent.
Well, yes, I agree... in that the thematic vowel is _unstressed_ *a.
It became reduced to [&] from MIE *e indeed because of the accent, yes.
> The quest for the truth does not go by what you already know. It
> should be pursued with an open mind.
I'm sure you mean something else for we most certainly must begin with
what we know to arrive at further answers. Otherwise, we're grappling
in the dark unnecessarily.
> That's not what I read about some of the Semitic languages. But if
> it's correct and vowel oppositions are really *lexical* and not
> merely morphologically conditioned as I can read, the prestage of IE
> we're talking about is not quite like Semitic.
I don't understand why you'd insist otherwise. Semitic and IE are
seperate language groups anyways and you're assuming that they must be
the same? I don't get where you're going with this. Nonetheless,
everything I've said so far still stands and you haven't raised any
noteworthy points. I guess you're saying that since Proto-Semitic,
say, shows *CaCa:C- in one form and *CaCiC- in another, therefore
Semitic doesn't have varied vocalism and, yes, as it's currently
formulated, the language appears to have no irregularities... that's
why it's suspect. Even Akkadian had irregularities like /illik/ so
yet again, the "varied vocalism" stance wins the debate.
> You do not know every stage.
Neither do you. It's our goal in common, no?
> No, I am not understanding your position. I refuse to consider
> Etruscan evidence here, it's putting the cart before the horse.
None of this really depends on Tyrrhenian, anyway, so it's of no
concern whether you reject it. However, it's unfortunate because you're
losing out on some details.
> I can explain most of the IE vowel alternations by rules working after
> the rise of zero-grade.
In my account, there are ablaut patterns occurring both before and after
Syncope. That is more balanced than saying that everything is recent.
> The weakening of unaccented /e/ to /o/ [...]
Again, no language I know of "weakens" /e/ to /o/. I can't be bothered
with this proto-Klingon of yours. Normally a vowel will lower or
deperipheralize to schwa when unstressed, not _add_ new features like
rounding! This statement in itself is absurd, not to mention the
rest of your ideas related to the change of thematic vowel through
magic tonal qualities that again round *o for no rational reason. As
I said, some of your analyses and bases make sense in themselves but
what you do with them afterwards is frightening.
> What is the charm about maximum similarity between "durative"
> and "perfect"?
That's the goal. To take unintuitive structures in a language and
figure out what simpler origins they come from. Even the universe
as it now stands arose from minute fluctuations in an otherwise
monotonously uniform sea of particles. If you disagree, write a
letter to your local quantum physicist.
> Because of the unknown time frame you could be right,
> but it does not seem knowable. I deem it very unwise to design names
> for these stages, for we will need hundreds of names,
Do I use "hundreds of names"? No. An exaggeration. I use three simple
names: Old IE, Mid IE and Late IE which I had originally thought were
about a thousand years each. Granted I split it further into eLIE
and lMIE perhaps but only to show that if Syncope marks the beginning
of the Late Period then what I'm saying occurred just after or before
such a time. However, it's turning out that Old IE is probably more like
five hundred years and that IndoTyrrhenian may have fully split up more
around 6000 BCE than 7000 BCE. The timeframes of the nomenclature I
use may change but are really dependent on major _language-based_ events
such as Syncope for MIE=>LIE and QAR for OIE=>MIE.
> and they will be changing all the time as we work on the finer tuning.
That's a given that is already understood without further elaboration.
> Therefore I have simply presented my phonetic rules in linear order
> without prejudice about their age in absolute values.
I have no prejudice either here. The timeframes are estimations at
best and may change in the future when I learn more. We don't differ
here really.
> The form *woid-xe is not normative for IE morphology at all. Rules
> based on it cannot be very good.
Do you mean here that *woid-, being unreduplicated, is not "normative"
compared to other perfects? Is that it? It really doesn't matter in
my analysis one way or another but the evidence shows that the verb
stem really isn't reduplicated.
> The infix is not of phonotactic origin. Like most other things it is
> sensitive to phonotactic factors in its further development, but
> that is a completely different matter.
Here we go again. It's "not of phonotactic origin", but what is the
_evidence_ in one short paragraph? These are still idle assertions.
> There is no constraint excluding a sequence of three consonants across
> a stem + flexive boundary.
We've gone over this. When this does occur, it can be shown that it
is not an ancient state of affairs. A word like *bHe:rst is quite a
heavy syllable indeed but it's already been shown that *-t is an eLIE
demonstrative ending related to *to- and that the *s-aorist verb stem
*bHe:rs- is an MIE innovation, being nothing but a denominal *s-stem
in the end which had lengthened the root vowel because of the irregular
'clipping' of the monosyllabic *-es morpheme during Syncope. When you
look deeper, the phonotactics are different in eLIE than they are in
PIE itself. That's just common sense anyways.
> It is completely contrary to the rest of IE morphology to have a
> thematic vowel follow a desinence. It is also contrary to IE
> phonology to have a thematic vowel leave the placing of the accent
> unaffected.
Since you're expecting all the rules of IE to apply to Pre-IE, I
evidently can't reason with you.
> The irregular forms of the root *weyd- can be derived from normal
> *we-wóyd-/*wé- wid- by dissimilation (haplology) giving *wóyd-/*wéyd-.
A lie. This "dissimilation" is completely ad hoc and isn't based on
any regular rule I know of.
> If retention of the vowel in the 1sg of the perfect in *-H2e is
> regular, why is the vowel lost in the middle voice which has accented
> *-H2é vs. unaccented *-&2?
I've already mentioned that the middle as a special conjugation doesn't
go farther back than eLIE. The middle endings are adapted from perfect
endings and there are various forms in different dialects.
> Why is the paradigm of *weid- which "has no problems" not followed by
> other examples?
What are you talking about? It's the _general_ pattern that works in all
the cases I can think of.
> But these are differences you put in without motivation,
The motivation is QAR and phonotactics.
> And how do you account for the existence of a perfect subjunctive?
It's an innovation. The subjunctive was originally unmarked for aspect.
>>> Narten presents are made form the *same* roots that have
>>> underlying short *e in other forms. It is a purely morphological
>>> matter.
>>
>> A morphological matter based on what exactly?
>
> Strange question, how could anyone know?
If you can't respond to an issue you bring up, don't bring it up then.
My take on Nartens are that they are denominals. I know that IE
later used *-ye- or *-ske- for that purpose but I don't think that
explicit marking was originally the case and bare nouns could be used
as verbs. Nartens would be one evidence of this. S-aorists another
which are lengthened in the first place because of the Szemerenyi
effect of 'clipping' as with other select morphemes I've already
mentioned.
> You apparently won't accept that the lopsidedness has a causation to
> it at all.
How can I? The "lopsidedness" is merely a tendency but not absolute
or even close. My theory explains it, as I've said, since the cummulative
sound changes I propose will cause such an effect without the need
for monovocalism which hasn't been adequately proven by you anyway. At
best, you've shown similarity with Sanskrit but there are still
unexplained differences such as the verbs with *a-vocalism that you
don't have an explanation for. You say I dismiss them. I am simply
forced to by your lack of adequate evidence.
> Well, then that item may be out. Are you insensitive to the very
> thought that you could be right and your explanations could do away
> with the entire recalcitrant material?
I simply showed the possibility in this particular case. It doesn't
explain every stem and there does seem to be a pattern of *a for
*o neighbouring labialized consonants.
> It is not natural anyways that very few roots have *a, if all others
> have it otherways.
You're speaking of "accented *a" really in the latest stage of IE though
which makes it kind of crazy. If you look at it through my eyes, you'll
see that the thematic vowel is original unaccented *a and that accented
*o was accented *a, so there are a whole slew of *a's both accented
and unaccented that once existed. We then have here a very natural
language replete with *a. If a recent Vowel Shift obliterates this
pattern by changing *a to *o in most positions, if *a was even originally
the vowel of choice in non-durative stems, and if original *a comes
to be more common in unaccented position because of lengthening before
voiced segments, naturally it will look "lopsided" as we find it. This
is not evidence and can be explained with resorting to anti-universal
theories.
> The alleged *o-verbs do not have a special *lexical* vocalism.
... Except for those attested in Anatolian which you deny.
> And why on earth is it called an aorist?
I won't insist on it because I'm basing that idea on extrapolation.
The durative vocalism is clearly *-e-, but we find *-o- in the
perfect. If the aorist originally used the same endings as the
durative, could have had a perfect vocalism? I think so. This makes
sense grammatically since the aorist is a kind of intermediate
between the other two aspects and would be parallel to the development
of the feminine later on which also appears to be treated as an
intermediate between animate (becoming masculine) and inanimate
(becoming neuter). In the case of the durative-aorist-perfect system
which must have developped in IndoTyrrhenian already, the ancestor
of it would be a subjective-objective system (with the perfect
continuing the subjective).
> Well, if you now choose to use the term thematic only about vowels
> nobody else would call by that name, you could end up being right
> (and incomprehensible). But yes, the suffix of the subjunctive was
> originally accented in my view as well.
One more notch. One day, we might be completely in agreement and
that's when the meteor will come <:)
> But if the different vowels are restricted to different positions,
> they do not contrast.
But they aren't restricted to different positions. Even in IE itself,
*e and *o are free to occur in both accented and unaccented position,
and in any syllable. The restriction is imaginary in the end. The
predominance of *e in the default form of the verb stem doesn't
translate into a phonological restriction. There isn't even a
restriction existent in the ablaut. We have accented *e alternating
with unaccented *o and even vice versa! What restriction? Seems like
another simulacrum on your part.
> However, that is not what I mean. The thematic root-present type is
> very plainly a transfer from the subjunctive, mainly the aorist
> subjunctive. It's a well-known observable and ongoing process which
> is repeated by younger material in the individual languages.
Not that "plainly". Evidently your idea is dependent on the antiquity
of the aorist subjunctive which I don't accept. The subjunctive was
originally unspecific to aspect, I figure.
= gLeN