Re: Re[4]: [tied] Re: *a/*a: ablaut

On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 09:19:09 +0100, "fournet.arnaud"
<fournet.arnaud@...> wrote:

>>What is the reason Hittite i or e
>>should be read as long ?
>Arnaud
>=============
>The plene spelling.
>
>Anyway, the length of /e:/ in Hittite is irrelevant (all
>short /e/'s are lengthened when stressed in Hittite). What
>matters is the Ablaut /e:/ ~ /0/. In a word like *k^é:rd,
>*k^r.d-', the evidence supports that overwhelmingly.
>Miguel
>=============
>Hm Hm
>So there is not a single word out of Central PIE
>to support /e:/.

No. The lengthening of /e/ in stressed position affects only
Hittite. The other Anatolian languages (Luwian, Lydian,
Lycian, Palaic) have different reflexes of /e/ and /e:/,
e.g. Lydian bira "house" < *pé:r (cannot be from *pér).

>You are in fact confirming my feeling
>that /e:/ is an innovation of Central PIE.
>Some Greek words have long o:
>klo:ps "stealer"
>tho:ps "flatterer"
>tro:ks "worm"
>sko:r "s*t"
>Obviously /o:/ is an innovation

Obviously not. The lengthening before Nsg. *-s is attested
in all branches of PIE, including Italic and Celtic.

As the lengthening is clearly secondary, you may of course
ignore it for macro-comparative purposes. Just don't pretend
it doesn't exist.

>[...]

>I think your system is highly complicated
>and presupposes a complete
>rearrangement of PIE vocalism
>which from my point of view
>conflict with the rest of the world.
>
>I believe PIE is conservative
>because PIE morphology has kept
>*o and *e (<*a) which were
>accented allophones as
>the main vowels.
>*i and *u which were weak
>from the start never managed to
>enter the true morphology
>at any time.
>
>In other words, I think your system
>unduly tries to project into the past
>of PIE, features that are in fact
>innovations of Central PIE.
>Your system is probably brilliant
>(I still have to understand it)
>but I'm not sure what it accounts for.
>Maybe Central PIE worked
>the way you say.
>Maybe or probably so.
>But I disagree it can apply to PIE
>and least of all to Pre-PIE.

There is a tendency to ignore, deny the existence of, or
explain away as "innovations" everything in Indo-European
that is irregular or hard to explain. Especially when the
object is to elucidate the connection with other language
families, I think there is little use for such a "(P)PDDIE"
((Pre-)Proto-Dumbed-Down-Indo-European). If you want to
learn about the history of a language or language family,
it's precisely the weird phenomena and the irregularities
that potentially provide the best clues (that is, if you can
make sense of them).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
miguelc@...