Grzegorz:
> The discussion here is about *ka, *k^a etc. in PIE.
> But who said they were really present?
Linguists. I can't conceive of an attested vowel
system without a low vowel /a/. Can you? Ergo, *a
is there without a doubt in IE, even if it's rare.
> Please consult the Lubotsky's article "Against a
> Proto-Indo-European phoneme *a", [...]
He's right about these instances of *a, yes, but
I think he might be going too far in some cases
like *was-. I don't think it truly was **wHs- at
the very last stage of IE. Vocalization of laryngeals
in these positions would have occured early on.
However, I do love how we admits that *sal- "salt"
is in reality an l-stem *seh2-l-. Hello! What have
I been saying all along?? So, now it's only a
matter of time before people see that the *-l-
suffix is an old partitive marker.
> *g^heH2n-s- ~ *g^hH2n-s- for goose.
It's also possible, especially if the vocalization
of some of these laryngeals occured early that
there would be a few common stems with an
alternation of accented *eh2 and unaccented *a...
So for example, nominative *neh2s "nose" but
genitive *nasós "of the nose". Afterall, IE
phonotactics tell us that there would be an initial
syllable nasal in the genitive if it were *nh2sos
and it would be expressed as **n.h2sos instead!
So... *a is needed.
= gLeN
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