Yet again: syllabicity

[CONNOLLY at LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU]

Pat wrote:

>I seem to have deleted the message from Leo this is in reply to. I tried to
>find it in the archives at the Linguist page, but the archives seem to be
>unavailble.

>> Pat, previously:

>>>> The data I think that may support this hypothesis are the different forms
>>>> of the (e.g.) IE verb for momentary and durative: durative *'CeC(V) and
>>>> momentary *C0'CV (Lehmann 1974:186).

>I don't know if Leo made this point. If CCV- was the original
>``perfective'', why is the thematic aorist so hard to reconstruct for PIE?
>*(e)videt and (e)bhuget and perhaps (e)rudhet but no others. In Indic we can
>see root aorists give rise to thematic ones by thematization (adars'ma gives
>way to adrs'a:ma, drs'ema etc). Rix sees a similar thing happening in Greek.

I didn't make the point, and since I don't save most of my posts, I don't know
what I said in response.  But I know I didn't say anything about aorist
constructions.

More significantly, I have decided not to respond to your other interesting
message, in which you deal with some of my objections to your proposals.  I
have looked at your website, and in particular at the list of monosyllabic
roots.  By themselves, without examples, they're hard to evaluate.  I find the
proposed semantics sometimes plausible, sometimes absurd.  What you added about
the original meaning of the PIE inanimate : Egyptian 'bread' word being 'torso'
only hurt your case, in my opinion.

I'm afraid I'll have to discontinue the discussion.  We are doing very
different things from totally different premises.  We can criticize and explain
all we want, but we're not going to reach anything resembling agreement on
principles and procedures, much less on results.  So, with no spirit of rancor
or ill will, I think we'd better just let it drop.

Regards
Leo

Leo A. Connolly                         Foreign Languages & Literatures
connolly at latte.memphis.edu              University of Memphis