Re: Nostratic (was Re: Schwebeablaut (was Re: tolkien?))

On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 23:12:01 +0100, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>
wrote:

> On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 16:41:11 -0500,
> Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 20:06:41 +0100, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > What's the reason to reconstruct with a's rather than as CéreC and
>> CeréC?
>>
>> My immediate thought when I saw it was "Nostratic, eh?", but that was
>> conditioned by unfamiliarity rather than familiarity. AFAIK, only Baldi
>> and
>> Pokorny require a PIE phoneme /a/ (and sometimes /a:/), and Baldi's
>> reconstruction really does not taste good to me.
>
> I don't know about the reconstructions you talk about, but as for why
> I reconstruct the pre-ablaut forms with *a rather than *e, see my
> previous post in the "Schwebeablaut" thread.  As *a doesn't contrast
> with an *e in pre-ablaut PIE as I see it, it is merely a matter of
> naming, and I prefer a name that describes what must have been.
I see from your other post what you were getting at. However, it seems (to
me) excessive to try to describe an even earlier form of the protolanguage
(than is required to explain the daughter languages), unless you're trying
to investigate a further level of relatedness (e.g. the various Nostratics)
.

The 2 (and a half) vowel e/o/0 ablaut (with i and u as vocalic consonants)
suffices for me, although a six vowel a/i/u/a'/i'/u' ablaut is an
interesting theory, that I had never seen before. Do you have any URLs to
hand that explain it with examples, and describe why it is important?






Paul