Jon, without being nasty, but as nobody alive, or who has ever been alive
and committed statements to the record, has ever +heard+ Indo-European,
whatever that might be, one must regard statements beginning with 'A
characteristic feature of Indo-European was ....' as +bollocks+.
Please leave our strong verbs alone, we have enough problems in these
islands as it is, just think about Scottish spelling.
Ah, 'tis is a hard nicht indeid.
Best
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon Corelis" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2006 6:48 PM
Subject: IE radicals (response to Robin)
> There's a complete explanation at http://www.bartleby.com/61/8.html.
Here's
> the basic part of it:
>
> =====
>
> A characteristic feature of Indo-European was the system of vocalic
> alternations termed apophony or ablaut. This was a set of internal vowel
> changes expressing different morphological functions. A clear reflex of
this
> feature is preserved in the English strong verbs, where, for example, the
> vocalic alternations between write and wrote, give and gave, express the
> present and past tenses. Ablaut in Indo-European affected the vowels e and
> o. The fundamental form was e; this e could appear as o under certain
> conditions, and in other conditions both e and o could disappear entirely.
> On this basis we speak of given forms in Indo-European as exhibiting,
> respectively, the e-grade (or full grade), the o-grade, or the zero grade.
> The e and the o might furthermore occur as long e or o, termed the
> lengthened grade.
>
> =====
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