Re: [tied] a

----- Original Message -----
From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2005 9:26 AM
Subject: [tied] a


>
> As I understand the short-and-long-vowel saga, Patrick rejects the
> classical view of IE vowels since he doesn't like the idea of a
> single-vowel language.
>
> But no matter what you do to the laryngelas, this fact remains: all
> PIE verbs and nouns have root ablaut. That means the root vowel was
> the ablaut vowel. That vowel was /a/ in pre-PIE. So all verbs and
> nouns roots had the vowel /a/. Not nice.

***
Patrick:

Torsten, I appreciate your efforts to, at least, understand what I am
proposing, whether you eventually agree or not.

I fully subscribe to the idea of a one-vowel pre-PIE as a stepping stone to
*A, the Ablaut vowel (*e/*o/*Ø) but only for non-long vowels.

***


> But suppose pre-PIE was a three-vowel language: /i/, /a/, /u/

***
Patrick:

In my opinion, impossible. /i/ and /u/ would have interefered with the
reflexes of /y/and /w/.

***

> Under certain conditions (no stress, stress, unknown),
> /a/ > nothing, /e/, /o/
>
> Under the same set of conditions
> /i/ > /i/, /ei/, /oi/
>
> And, under the same set of conditions
> /u/ > /u/, /eu/, /ou/

***
Patrick:

Absolutely upside down for what I am proposing. /ew/, zero-grade /u/; not
/u/, full-grade /ew/.

***


> None of this is phonetically implausible. Re the reflexes of /i/
> and /u/, cf the inflection of nominal i- and u- stems.
>
> We now have something that is identical to the classical view of
> PIE, except that the striking similarity between the three series of
> reflexes is spurious (but nonetheless real). The question is what
> the PIEers made of this. How was it changed into a system? Vennemann
> assumes Semitic influence to account for the systematicness of
> Germanic ablaut in verbs, maybe this is the case here too?

***
Patrick:

I have looked hard at Semitic vowel-patterns, and can see no connection; I
think PIE and Semitic both went through the one-vowel stage (which I call
Pontic), and then developed independently and differently.

***

>
> The problem of this analysis (ie starting from the zero grade) is
> how to account for i- and u- ablaut in the other direction,
> namely /i/, /ie/, /io/ and /u/, /ue/, /uo/

***
Patrick:

Could you elucidate what you mean here?


***