Re: Short and long vowels

To begin with: Thank you, Jens, for your detailed explanations. I
respect your scholarship and deeply appreciate your taking time to
explain to me. It always was (and is) with trepidation that dare to
I question you.

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "elmeras2000" <jer@...> wrote:
> I do not mean *eH3 (I refuse to write "a" for a vowel we know only
> as /e/) > *&3H3, but rather *H3&3.
>
So you are saying in PIE, zero-grade: *eH3 > *H3&3, unchanged in I-I.
The reason I wrote *aH3 was that I began with full-grade.
PIE to I-I: *eH3 > *aH3 by normal I-I sound shifts.
Then zero-grade in I-I: *aH3 > *&3H3 (or as you say *H3&3).
Are you saying then that the zero-grade reduction could not have
proceeded anew in I-I from full-grade?

> You are insisting on giving Patrick's theory ever new chances even
> when it has been proved null and void. There are differentiated
> effects of the three laryngeals in some of the IE
daughterlanguages,
> ergo there must have been three different laryngeals in PIE. The
> arguments make for reading on quite an advanced level of insight
> into this however, and I revolt when that is countered by arrogant
> schoolmaster pointers about the basics of the scholarly field.
That
> is what I was served by Patrick, and that is why I stopped talking
> to him.
>
Perhaps one attraction I have to his hypothesis is that I was able
to figure it out despite his inadequate explanation.

In the few weeks I have monitored Cybalist, I have observed his
arrogance and rudeness. It seems to me that he has been unusually
polite in the last few days; or is it just that he has been
unusually quiet?

I wonder, however, if you might entertain an alternative formulation
of the hypothesis:
Instead of three laryngeals which colored one vowel to three vowels,
may there have been initially three vowels which colored one
laryngeal to three laryngeals?
*eH, *aH, *oH > *eH1, *aH2, *oH3 and
*He, *Ha, *Ho > *H1e, *H2a, *H3o.
This gives the three laryngeals which you find necessary. Since they
are already associated with the three vowels, it might not be
necessary to assume they have coloring properties.

> The "pre-Nostratic" chopped liver he makes
> out of IE words is the worst kind of pseudoscholarhsip by fiat I
> have ever seen in this field.
>
I certainly agree that his Nostratic derivations are unconvincing.
But might one not take the resulting PIE word as input from which
the attested forms could have derived?

Tom