Re: Short and long vowels

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "elmeras2000" <jer@...> wrote:

> > How can there be roots of the shape *H2leH1-, *H2meH1-, *H2weH1-

,

> > *H3elH1-, *H2enH1-, *H2werH1-, *H1elH2-, *H1eysH2-, *H1ewH2-,
> > *H2neH3-, *H2emH3-, *H2erH3-? How could the same root vowel

trigger

> > different shwa colorations adjacent to already-neutralized
> > laryngeals? The matter has simply not been allotted the

necessary

> > amount of reflection.
>
> I couldn't confidently identify 4 of these roots: *h2leh1,

*h1eysh2,

> *h2neh3 (but *h3neh2 will do in its stead) and
>
> *h2emh3.

I took the examples from the reverse index of roots in LIV. *H2leH1-
is Gk. aléo: 'grind'; *H1eysH2- is Skt. is.n.á:ti 'impels' (root
noun in Lat. i:ra from *eisa); *H2neH3- is Hitt. hannari 'condems',
Gk. ónomai 'blemish' (allegedly assimilated from *ano-). Not all are
necessarily correct, but there can be no doubt that unidentical
laryngeals can occur in one and the same root.

> For the others, I list possible pre-ablaut forms and the
> e-, o- and zero grades in order as I believe they
>
> would be under Patrick's theory.

[]

> I can see only two objections:
>
> a) Polysyllabic stems
> b) Unpredictability of stress.

But that reveals the utter arbitrariness of the whole idea. The
desired extra vowels have been put in just for this purpose. As I
have just written in a response to Tom Brophey, the monosyllabic
nature of the IE root is not a thing to be given up lightly. It
seems to me that far too much of what is well-established and
continues to prove fruitful in IE comparative linguistics falls to
dust if that is done. So the choice of vowels rather than consonants
as the source of the Greek triple representation of the laryngeals,
an arbitrary choice in the first place, seems to be a very poor
choice indeed.

>
> There are many roots currently reconstructed as ending in *-h2g^

which

> may actually be compounds of *h2eg^ (make that **hag^) 'lead', so

it

> is not obvious that these are insuperable objections.
>
> So what is the problem with these roots?

What "many roots" are you talking about? Would (Pokorny-notation)
*pa:g^/k^- 'fix' be a compound? Would *wa:g^- 'split'? Of course
everything has a prehistory, but is it always transparent to us?

Jens