[tied] Re: Short and long vowels

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "etherman23" <etherman23@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <G&P@...> wrote:
> > >> > Bomhard and I differ on the details of the correspondences,
> > >> That's significant though, because your two voices don't constitute
> > >> cumulative support
> > > that is ridiculous.
> >
> > If the two reconstructions are both possible, then neither is
> convincing.
>
> Even PIE suffers from this. The consonants can be reconstructed with
> /t d dh/ series, /t t' d/ series, /t t' th/ series, and even /t th d
> dh/ series. Some people reconstruct one vowel, some two, some three,
> some ten. And how many different versions of the Laryngeal Theory are
> there? Most people have settled on three, but I know that some favor
> one, some favor two, some favor four, and some even favor twelve. Yet
> it's pretty safe to say PIE is the most believable hypothesis. To
> explain the similarities amongst the languages.

The most important point is whether the correspondences agree. If a
pair of reconstructions can be manually transposed from one system to
the other, then all that is debatable is the phonetics.

Richard.