Re: [tied] Re: Monovocalism: sequel

Torsten:

> Hypothetical example: what is the "true vowel" of a Semitic root? The
> question is meaningless since Semitic ablauts. Now why do we say that
> that majority of verbs in IE have /e/ as stem vowel, when it can only
> be derived for the present stem (etc)? Should we rather say: it seems
> PIE ablauted?

That doesn't answer the question of what the vocalism originally was
because every language has vowels and we still have to figure them out.

> That's why personally I prefer to use Møller's notation *C-C- (etc.)
> for standard *CeC-.

Yes, it can work for many languages when discussing stems whose
vocalisms are subject to ablaut as in Semitic, IE and Kartvelian.
There's no stopping you with IE, but the verb stems that don't contain
*e as expected still have to be acknowledged. I also suspect that
Semitic, Kartvelian or any ablauting language is not without its
irregular blips.


= gLeN