--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:
> What correlates with IE *str-, for
> example? It's laughable that anybody would even continue to try to
find
> a correlate with this in Uralic or EA.
Laugh all you like, the code appears to have been partly cracked now
by a young candidate student of my own. The IE initial clusters have
been found to correspond to simple consonants in Uralic. I can say
no more about it at this point without special permission.
> Anybody with a functioning brain
> can see that IE created those consonant clusters because of stress
off
> of the initial syllable. IE is the only language in this list with
> accentual ablaut patterns like *?es-mi/*?s-mes and the only one
> coincidentally with a _mobile_ accent.
Anybody with an honest brain would know that without evidence you
cannot say anything. It seems to be true that the IE alternation
between vowel grades combined with accent mobility is peculiar to
Indo-European. That however does not exclude in any way that the
prestage had clusters. Certainly zero grades created many clusters,
but did it create them all? That is a completely baseless
assumption. Certainly Eskimo-Aleut and Uralic (and Altaic?) have no
initial clusters, but does that represent the original state of
affairs or is it due to phonotactic reduction? A priori, one reply
is as probable as the other.
> It's time for you to add two plus two in this respect.
Some seem to forget that it makes only four.
Jens