> I recently signed off the indo-european list because it was a little high
volume
> for me, but yes, I saw (in fact, I indirectly instigated) that debate between
> Pat Ryan and the rest about Lehmann... As far as I could tell, Pat Ryan
doesn't
> actually *agree* with Lehmann about anything but is very upset when other
people
> dismiss his ideas summarily. Peculiar.
>
> As far as I could tell that fight consisted of Patrick arguing that you
couldn't
> ignore Lehmann, but then rejecting the idea which is held not only by Lehmann
> but also by the vast majority of IEists, that Y, W, R, L, M, and N (and the
> laryngeals, whatever they are) pattern equivalently in PIE.
>
> What the others on the list objected to was Lehmann's notion (which they
> characterized as 'structuralist') that rather than understanding PIE to have
had
> vowels, like any other language on the planet, we should understand it to have
> had a somehow non-segmental quality called 'syllabicity,' which nonetheless
> manifested itself in vowel segments.
>
> I don't think that the active/stative and OV issues are really comparable:
they
> may be nutty, but they're not nutty for any reason particularly connected to
> Lehmann's "structuralism."
>
> Ed
>
>