Re: long vowels colouring

From: Arnaud Fournet
Message: 62611
Date: 2009-01-27

>> Yes, the rule is known as Eichner's Law and it is almost generally
>> accepted in the field.
>>
>> Piotr
>>
>
> ...but not by Alwin Kloekhorst, whose Hittite Etymological Dictionary
> rejects the standard examples me:hur, se:hur, kane:ss-, henkan-,
> hippara- etc (he gives a full list under mehur, p568). Does anyone
> have any thoughts on his treatment of these forms - convincing,
> unconvincing?
>
> Oliver Simkin
>
===========

That's an interesting point,
not only about Alwin Kloekhorst
but also about Piotr and this phrase : "accepted by the field".
Who are the "field" ?

It seems to me that Kloekhorst and his close colleagues and "masters" reject
a certain number of pet ideas of M. Gasiorowski, namely things like H1alpa
"cloud", explicitly rejected p169.
It's also clear that Kloekhorst is very cautious about "plene writing" and
he states that there is no current theory of plene writing that really makes
sense.
And another point he mentions is the absence of a diachronic approach to
plene writing in Hittite itself in the first place.
For that matter, things like me:hur, se:hur, kane:ss- with supposedly long
e: are not far from being a fiction.

I have been very much impressed by Kloekhorst's dictionary (and thinking).
I have been delighted to read this on p11 :
"The times of a solely Graeco-Indic reconstruction of PIE are definitely
over : we should always take the Anatolian material into account and keep in
mind the possibility that the non Anatolian IE languages have commonly
undergone an innovation where Anatolian preserves the original PIE
situation."
How wonderful !
I once wrote that :
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/52044
One of the major flaws of orthodox PIE is that it describes the post-PIE
proto-Central dialect that ultimately led to Greek, Balto-slavic,
Indo-Iranian in the first place.

I vote Kloekhorst for President !

Arnaud