PIE e/o Ablaut

[Richard M. Alderson III]

On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, Stanley Friesen (sarima at friesen.net) wrote:

> At 05:27 AM 3/16/00 +0000, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

>> Regardless of its acceptance, I find it very strange. Pre- means 'before';
>> if a form occurred *before* PIE came into existence, then it is non-PIE. If
>> it is non-PIE, why not call it something else --- like Nostratic?

> Because that implies it was ancestral to other languages as well.  Terms of
> the form Pre-PX refer to *internally* reconstructed stages with no separate
> descendent languages known.  Thus Pre-PIE is assumed to be *later* than
> Nostratic (or whatever one calls it), but earlier than PIE,  Moreover it
> has no known descendent languages that are not also IE languages, so no
> other name is available for it.

Actually, the timeframe for pre-IE is *not* set with regard to Nostratic (for
whichever value of "Nostratic" one wishes to assume):  Internal reconstruction
is as strictly timeless as comparative reconstruction in its results.

As an example of what can be done by IR, I have been told that the alternations
between fricatives or affricates of various stripe and velars are transparent
enough in the Slavic languages that a clever linguist could eliminate all of
them through internal reconstruction--and would end up with a set of pre-forms
that would be incorrect for the Proto-Slavic stage that we reconstruct using
the comparative method.

The two methods must be used in conjunction, and with great care.

								Rich Alderson