Re: [tied] IE vowels: The sequel.

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

> Jens:
> > I set a trap for you.
>
> Not really, but whatever makes you happy. I don't pay as much heed
> to your information as I once did, when first I found it to be

tainted

> by your biases. Look below.

Yeah, right ... I asked you about your nonsense, and you gloatingly
insisted on it, not knowing how wrong it was. I was even lectured
about the importance of majority rule. Of course we all know how
wrong that is, and how little we respect it, seeing that we
basically go by isolated-but-supported archaisms that have survived
against all odds. That is what we take seriously by Meillet's old
principle.

> > I made it appear that you were right about /i/ being restricted

to

> > pretonic position wherever regular.
>
> It's irrelevant. The overall pattern of IE has led me to the

conclusions

> I state, not your 'wise counsel'.

But the "overall pattern" you invoked and lectured us about, telling
us how immensely important it was, does not exist. You just believed
so and made it up.

> The fact remains firm that the overall accent pattern in the

latest stage

> of IE has been significantly modified to the point that the far

less

> common _athematic_ stems are the ones that show any trace of the

original

> accent system.


> Any fool can see that the accent of thematic stems has
> been regularized to the initial syllable and it is on this that I

base my

> conclusions.

Well, I may just not be a fool after all then. The accent of
thematic verbal stems is columnal. Sure that is in a sense regular,
but that is no valid reason to assume that it was earlier mobile.
None of the processes I can formulate to yield the accent pattern of
thematic stems and verify by their clarifying effect on independent
material is analogical. The columnal accent can be predicted by a
phonetic rule everywhere.

> As a result of this independent observation, I will inevitably end

up

> with conclusions about pre-IE accentuation that will defy what we

come

> to see in IE itself, just as there will be facts about Old English

that

> don't conform nicely to what we see in Modern English.

I do not think there is any material in Modern English that excludes
anything known to be correct for Old English. In like fashion,
observations made for attested stages of IE should not be allowed to
exclude postulates made for PIE or any supposed prestage of it. You
violate that principle all the time.

>Do I feel ashamed
> that it violates statistics in this case? No, because only you are

the

> one that takes things out of context and generalizes to the point

of

> absurdity.

No, I asked you explicitly if you meant it that way. You did and
lectured me in your characteristic high and mighty way about it.
Then I consulted the facts and got a different reply. Nice to know
where to go.

> Statistics is one of many tools and facts to consider and in

regards to

> IE accentuation, statistics will not tell us that the acrostatic

paradigm

> is quite recent. It will instead betray us unless we properly

weigh ALL

> evidence in this matter.

But you give priority to invented evidence which is indeed absent.
You just made it up and bragged about it.

> > Now, it so happens that i-stems are *never* accented after

the /i/.

>
> Oh my. I feel violated by your irrelevant trickery. How might I

pick

> myself up and dust myself off?

You can't.

> Why, I will now fashion a noose around
> my neck and hang my desperate soul from a sturdy oak tree in order

to

> remove myself from your unbearable disdain >:P
>
> In this case, I really don't care one way or another what you've

said,

> because I will still arrive at the same conclusions based on what

I've

> found beforehand without any of your input.

Indeed, without any input.

> > Your "*xargi-" is in reality *H2r.g^-í- in both Greek argí-pous
> > and Vedic r.jí-s'van-.
>
> Minor detail in the first syllable. The accent here is still on

the *i,

> the main point afterall, because of the adjectival accent pattern.

It

> is unoriginal, derived from the genitival accent.

It is not a trivial point that the only evidence you quote to sell a
wrong rule is evidence against it. You said the accent in i-stems
was always, or with a strong statistic preponderance, after the -i-.
It just never is. You also lectured readers of the list about the
importance of these precious details which you just never looked
into and which are not true.

> > The only real material of any size of -i- in alternation with -e-

/-o-

> > appears *after* the accent or in compounds *with* the accent.
>
> Yes. And? As I mentioned above, to see the accent without change
> (as if we really need to in this case to put two and two

together), one

> would have to think up a compound with a first element that is

thematic

> and a second element that is athematic. In this way, we might

conceivably

> get accent on the second stem in order to see a pretonic *i-stem,
> assuming that such rare roots would not be prone to analogical

change

> or would truly be considered an athematic compound in all in order

to

> avoid acrostatic regularization. Good luck.

When thematic stems are replaced by i-stems in the first part of
compounds they are accented on the -i-. The exclusive pattern you
insisted so strongly upon does not occur. Or is your "rule" okay,
only *despite* the evidence? Are you fighting so hard to avoid ad-
hoc rules that you make them contra-hoc??

> As I said above, because it is in this case the _rarer_ athematic

stems

> that preserve original accent at all, we can either wait for the

perfect

> evidence to come our way to spoonfeed us the result... or we can

use our

> noggin' and piece it together on our own.

Not this way we can't.

> Yes, I know, you're afraid
> of extrapolation as a logical tool and mistake it, as do most

people,

> with fertile imagination.

I see a most sterile and counterproductive stubbornness in this
insistence on what is wrong even as formulated, no mistake about
that.

> The two are really not the same since
> extrapolation is still based on facts while imagination is just

ignorant

> of them.

This may be entered as a plea of guilty. You are extrapolating
against the facts you quote. That's beyond rescue.

> > I have looked high and low, but I have not found Caland's

adjective-

> > suffix representative -i- *before* the accent. It just does not

seem

> > to exist.
>
> For the umpteenth time, it's Acrostatic Regularization and some

other

> accentuation changes in Late IE that hinder your discovery. You may
> never find such a thing, to be brutally honest, but that doesn't

mean

> what I'm saying is baseless or untrue. There are other

considerations

> other than statistics... yes it's true!

What power do you have to just declare things "true" if they are
blatantly at variance with what you cite in their favour? Up to this
point it had been my understanding that you were just not informed
about the facts and therefore were morally excused when you said so
many silly things. But not we are told flat out by yourself that you
do not even care about the evidence or by the existence of a basis
for your assumptions - you just make them anyway!

> > That was perhaps not nice of me, and perhaps I should feel

terrible

> > about it. I'm not even shamed to admit it feels just fine.
>
> Hey, if you want to put on the jester outfit, that's your fetish
> but it honestly has nothing to do with anything. I'm glad you got
> whatever neurosis off your chest. If there is a 'trap' here, it is

the

> one I set for you that you fall into every single time. This trap

is

> called constructive reasoning. What you've shown by this exercise

is

> that, being unable to demonstrate your points of view with any

modicum of

> logic, you now resort to trickery in order to 'attack' me (or

whatever

> it was supposed to be) out of obvious desperation. If you are

desperate,

> it suggests that you may have seen some worthy points come out of

my

> posts and rather than accept any of them outright, you will first

repress

> them out of fear of being wrong, hell, even throw a few

condascending

> ditties my way from time to time while you slowly digest the

inevitables.


My very grave concern has been the prospect that less experienced
members of this list might get the impression that serious and
honest painstaking analytical work that states reasons and has a
basis in empirical evidence is no good in comparison with any wild
guess that comes to mind to an oracle who just says he knows it all.
It may be hoped that some have now seen what that really is.

Jens