Re: Vocalic Theory ('Laryngeal' Theory)

At 10:11:29 AM on Wednesday, June 11, 2008, Patrick Ryan
wrote:

> I have made several additions to

> http://geocities.com/proto-language/OneLaryngealVocalicTheory.htm

> of a minor variety.


> In response to my challenge to list-members to critique
> the Vocalic Theory, I received two major responses:

> 1) Miguel chose to interpret my challenge as a call to
> show what the standard 'Laryngeal Theory' _could_ explain
> but the Vocalic Theory could not. After several
> inappropriate examples, he withdrew without final comment
> from the discussion. In my opinion, his point was not
> sustained.

It was pretty clear at the time that you didn't understand
his comments; your note 5 accurately reflects this lack of
understanding, though not the discussion itself. It appears
that you didn't understand my point, either, since your note
7 has nothing to do with it. Considering the staggering
amount of nonsense on your other pages, including a number
of obvious errors that I pointed out over two years ago to
no effect, I'm not going to waste my time going over the
page in detail on the off chance of finding something
worthwhile.

I did happen to notice this bit of fudge:

> Thus, a PIE root like *pel-, which appears in these
> different forms: *ple:-, *pla:-, *plo:- — these forms are
> presumed by the 'laryngealists' to be caused by the
> addition of a following H1, H2, or H3 to *plé.

> This seems a real oddity: the addition of the 'laryngeals'
> under apparently identical phonotaxis produces three
> lexically different roots: *1. ple:-, 'pour'; *2. a.
> pla:-, 'put in motion by pushing or beating'; and *9.
> plo:-, 'burn'.

It is clearly inaccurate to speak of *pel- as a single root
appearing in different forms. It's also incorrect to speak
of *adding* the laryngeals: they are intrinsic parts of the
roots reconstructed with them.

> How much more straightforward it seems to assume that we
> are dealing with three different roots, which in pre-PIE
> had the forms: *pÁle:-/*pAlé:-, *pÁla:-/*pAlá:-, and
> *pÁlo:-/*pAló:-; and that the final vowel differentiated
> them lexically.

This is obviously no more straightforward than assuming
three distinct roots, *pleh1-, *pleh2-, and *pleh3-,
differentiated by distinct final consonants.

Brian