Talk:Brugmann's law

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[edit] Unattributed facts/ original research

I quite like a lot of this article even though it needs a good clean up - the rather personal style isn't really very encyclopedic and it needs a lot of sourcing. More worrying is the last paragraph. The idea that ablaut e/o alternation was originally a/ā must be possible but I don't see how that relates to the possible existence of PIE *a mentioned before that; I don't see how it's connected to the subject of the article; I can't see any evidence for the proposal (just a "what if?"); most importantly the idea's not sourced and I've never come across anything like it before. This makes me suspect original research. If the paragraph's author could clarify things that would be really good but I'm tempted to delete. --Lo2u ^{(T • C)} 00:48, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Rereading it I do now understand the connection to the article but not to the absence/presence of *a in PIE. I don't see what problem the proposal is supposed to solve though or what might cause someone to propose it (is a long/short *a alternation really "more familiar"? Does the proposal help to regularise some irregular sound change? It seems to me the answer to both questions is no). I really suspect that Wikipedia is the first to publish the idea.--Lo2u ^{(T • C)} 21:45, 11 April 2007 (UTC)