"piotr gasiorowski" <
gpiot-@...> wrote:
Hi, Gregory, welcome to the list,
What you're talkig about is, technically speaking, the
difference between labialised velars (/kW/, etc., i.e. velar consonants
accompanied by lip-rounding) and labiovelar
(doubly articulated) stops (let's transcribe them /kP/, etc.,
to keep them apart from /k/+/p/ sequences). Both types of sound are
pretty common in the languages of the world,
the latter especially in Africa, e.g. in Yoruba (kPakPa
'field'); the very name of Igbo (a major Kwa language, spoken in
Nigeria) contains /gB/.
The contrast between the two is hardly sharp in acoustic or
articulatory terms; in either case you have a combination of a velar
closure with some kind of secondary labial
activity. The difference depends on the strength of that
secondary element. A weakened allophone of /gB/ may well sound like
[gW], and by giving some extra emphasis to the
labial element in /gW/ you can turn it into something like
[gB]. If the labial articulation comes to dominate the velar component,
you can get [gB] > [b] and [gW] > [w] or [b]
(either directly or via [gB]); [b] inherits the manner of
articulation of the labialised velar and its labial place of
articulation, promoted to primary status. All these
changes are perfectly natural from the phonological point of
view. A comparable change (with fricatives instead of stops) is [xW] >
[f], very amply attested (even in English --
compare the spelling and the pronunciation of laugh, enough,
rough, etc.; the [f] developed historically from a velar fricative [x]
which acquired lip-rounding from the vowel
it followed).
As a matter of fact, it has been proposed before (by A.
Martinet, I think), that the PIE labiovelars were realised as doubly
articulated stops. But there are some good
arguments in favour of the traditional interpretation. There
is some evidence of strong lip-rounding influencing the quality of an
adjacent vowel (e.g. in Greek); /w/ also
produces such an effect, but labial stops don't. The Latin
change of */gW/ into /w/, or Germanic */gWH/ > /w/, square better with
the standard view. Perhaps most importantly,
in the Centum languages biphonemic sequences such as */k/ +
*/w/ nearly always develop exactly like the reconstructed labiovelars;
e.g. ekwos 'horse' (NOT *ekWos! -- cf.
Sanskrit aÅ>va-) > P-Celtic *epo- (cf. the Gaulish horse
goddess Epona).
As for my personal opinion, I would admit the possibility of
[kP] etc. being an occasional realisation of the corresponding
labialised velar and making it more confusible with
[p] -- at least in those IE dialects that gave rise to the
various Centum branches.
Best regards,
Piotr
****************************
Dear Piotr,
Thank you for the informative reply. The example [xW]>[f] is exactly
the type
of example I was looking for...and in my native language, too! I can
also see
the force of the biphonemic examples such as *ekwos and "kwon and the
evidence
of Hittite. I am happy anyway that the notion of a [kP] in IE at
certain stages
and in certain branches is not outside the realm of possibility. I will
try to
check out Martinet's work. The changes [kW]>[kP]>[p] had, of course,
occurred
to me as a possible transitional sequence. However, just the fact
you mentioned, that [kP] involves "extra emphasis" compared to [kW],
made
me doubt it as a likely transformation. (Don't most phonetic changes
seem to involve weakening rather than strengthening emphasis?)
Best,
Gregory
P.S. Thanks also to all others for their interesting replies. I am
heading
off to the airport for a quick trip, so I don't have the time to respond
to each right now. I'll return to the list when I may with some more
questions!