Jens:
> It is quite obvious that *o, to the extent it respresents an IE
> original vowel at all, is attributable to the same source as *e, and
> that *o is a conditioned variant (perhaps even more than one) while
> *e is the unconditioned form.
Alright, when worded that way, I'd say that where we disagree, at the
heart of it, is whether or not this statement can be true in _all_
instances of *o or only certain ones. I claim "only certain", you seem
to be saying "all". Our point of agreement then, save the technicalities,
is the thematic vowel.
Yet, minimal pairs like *bHoros and *bHeros mentioned earlier evidently
disallow the same kind of phonemic reductions that apparently are doable
in Sanskrit. This is clearly because both *e and *o can occupy the same
position -- Ergo, they are two seperate vowels with seperate histories
that occasionally intertwine but not completely. The true phonemic
contrast of *e & *o despite ablaut is undeniable not only here but even
in the position occupied by the "thematic vowel" where we find both
singular thematic forms in nominative *-o-s and plural athematic forms in
*-es. I'm aware of all your tactics to explain this away (phonemic **z
and o-infixing, ugh) but they are never ideas that can't just be equally
replaced with some other ad hoc theory. My solution has been to accept
what we see, so *-es < *-es and *-o-s < *-a-s -- They are phonemically
a minimal pair and yet still can have [-z] if you desire.
So these facts completely distance IE from the situation shown for
Sanskrit and the endless invocations of monovocalism just don't cut it.
If *o is "the conditioned variant" of *e based only on the thematic
alternations where this certainly _is_ the case, then accent cannot be
the motivating factor of this conditioning based on what we find
attested. Thematic stems, your immediate basis of all of this afterall,
have no such accent shifts that would explain it.
What then is left as the trigger of the assumed conditioning? In effect,
nothing. We are holding onto an assumption that offers us no clear answer.
This is where we have a simple binary choice.
Option One is to continue a hopeless path and choose one of many possible
ad hoc solutions in order to ignore that your assertion cannot be
attributed to _all_ instances of *o as the examples above irrefutably
show. So thus starts the untempered imagination: Maybe the accent shifted,
maybe IE had four tones like Mandarin, maybe analogy played a part. Maybe,
maybe, maybe, maybe.
Option Two is that in a sea of maybes, we accept what we see. We see that
two vowels are needed in these unavoidable examples. We must accept that
_fact_. We _cannot_ continue to put a random assumption before evidence
and dare call ourselves rational.
Perhaps the rest of our debate should be given seperate threads. Otherwise
posts will continue to be long and disordered.
= gLeN