Re: [tied] PIE dorsals

On Thu, 7 Dec 2000 15:59:48 +0100, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
<gpiotr@...> wrote:

>From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
>
>>Why should the 3-way distinction have had to be preserved *somewhere* for it to have been real?
>
>Because IE is a large family with numerous branches. As I said, the Satem group is pretty close-knit (either as a genetic taxon or as a very old Sprachbund) and may arguably be treated together, but for the other branches (Hellenic, Germanic, Italic, Celtic, "Illyroid", Tocharian and Anatolian) you'd have to propose several independent mergers of *K and *K^ -- a non-Satemic conspiracy.

But such a change is trivial, especially considering the palatalized
velar had no support from anywhere else in the phonological system.
It may well have happened independently several times over.

>In evolutionary biology, outgroup evidence is used to distinguish a shared innovation from a shared retention. Since Anatolian can be regarded as an outgroup with respect to the other IE languages, it's likely that the Kentum dorsals are original (I mean PIE), since this is what we find in Anatolian. The Luwian counterevidence is meagre, doubtful and inconsistent.

Looking further towards the chapter on Anatolian in Ramat & Ramat (by
Silvia Luraghi), I find HLuw. zurni- "horn"; HLuw azu(wa)- "horse"
(Lyc. esbe), Lyc. sñta "100 (1000?)", none of them explicable by the
effect of neighbouring front vowels (and Luraghi further adds that *k
before *i > zero in Luwian/Lycian, without examples).

>It's symptomatic that only little-known and hard-to-analyse languages are alleged to have this three-way contrast (Albanian some time ago, Luwian at present, Thracian or Phrygian at any time).

What Thracian and Phrygian (and the second hand information on
Illyrian: centum or satem?) seem to show is that the palato-velars
were maintained as such (without assibilating) until classical times,
judging by spellings such as Gord- and Zord- (/g^ord-/ ?).

>>>(Re: the relative rarity of *K) I've never seen a convincing counterargument.
>
>>Actually, your (3) is one. "There is a bias in the Brugmannian reconstruction: anything that has a *$ reflex in any Satem language is automatically assigned to the *K^ set."
>
>But it's a counterargument that cuts both ways. The origin of the *$ reflexes is problematic if they don't go back to *K^. Secondary palatalisations usually produce different results in Satem languages.

Later. The first and second Slavic (or French) palatalizations also
give results that differ between each other.

>But even if you turn a blind eye to this problem and assign the doubtful cases to the *K set, the other dorsals are still several times more frequent.
>
>As for the number of *K words, I'd say that it's amazingly low for what is apparently the unmarked subset of a natural class. If loanwords and onomatopoeic words are excluded, the are very few good cases left. The rarity of "unmotivated" *K is striking in any lexical field.

I'm not so sure *K's are as rare as all that. Just as an experiment,
I counted almost half the Sanskrit entries starting with k- (the ka-
and ka:-'s, as a matter of fact) in the index to IEW, for a total of
175 words and morphemes. 19 of them were only referred to from
outside the *k/*k^ or *kw pages. 30 were referred to from the *kw
pages, 126 from the *k/*k^ pages. That's four times as many *k-'s as
*kw-'s. I counted 117 Sanskrit forms starting with s'a-/s'a:-.

Even if the *k-set contains more loanwords, onomatopoeia and Pokornian
mistakes than the *k^ and *kw sets (which might be true), all it shows
is that the unnatural "gap" in the unmarked member (if due to a
phonological event in pre-PIE) tended to be filled with borrowings and
onomatopoeic formations (I'll leave Pokorny out of this), just as we
would expect (the same happened with the *b gap).

> I mentioned PIE numerals in my posting, but the same is true of body parts, elements of nature, names of animals etc. Look at this:
>
>*K^ -- *k^uo:n 'dog', *k^asos 'hare', *(h1)ek^wos 'horse', *pork^os 'pig(let)', *(h1)elk^is 'elk', *pek^u 'livestock', *g^Hwe:r 'wild animal', *g^Hans 'goose', *h2rtk^os 'bear', *h1eg^His 'hedgehog', *dHg^Huhs 'fish'... (nothing recherché about them)
>
>*KW -- *wlkWos 'wolf', *gWo:us 'cow', h2agWnos 'lamb', ...
>
>*K -- *gerh2- 'crane' (how much longer can you make this inventory)?

Not much longer...

>Brugmannian *K^ is also significantly more frequent than *KW, which squares well with the interpretation of *K^ (= my *K) as the unmarked member of the opposition *K : *KW. This is what we find in Kentum. During the Satem dorsal shift the markedness values were reversed and a new *K (reflecting the merger of PIE *KW with unshifted old *K) became the unmarked ("plain") dorsal.

>I wasn't too precise about those "blockers", and forgot to mention one environment specified by Meillet, namely the position after PIE *u (*jugom, *leuk-, *dHugh2te:r [where *g occurs in two overlapping blocking environments]). In this environment Sanskrit and Balto-Slavic show *K quite consistently, but Armenian has *$ (Armenian is in general the most consistently "satemising" language).

Armenian is (was, actually) also the most consistently labializing
language (*tw, *sw and *kw -> k`; *dw -> (r)k; *dhw, (*zw ?) -> r).
In particular, the merger of *tw, *sw and *kw shows that *kw and *k
did not merge in Armenian until very late in the game (this makes it a
very atypical satem language). The polarisation (labialized ~
palatalized) would explain why the *k-set was even further reduced (or
the *k^-set further extended) in Armenian, whether under your
assumption (there was no *k^ to begin with) or mine (there was a *k^).

What is Meillet's (or Kortlandt's) explanation for the position before
non-syllabic *u (*k^u- vs. *ku- [vs. *kw-])? Without an original *k^
~ *k opposition, the reflexes in the different languages become
totally incomprehensible (they're difficult enough *with* *k ~ *k^).

>As for your Slavic scenario, if you can show some evidence (preferably a set of minimal pairs) for a ternary contrast like *t : *t' : *tW, we can discuss it.

I can't, of course, it was just a thought the Old Irish situation made
me think of. Now if Slavic had had three yers... The velarization of
the "hard" consonant set is merely a case of polarisation vis à vis
the "soft" set. I do think the velarization itself might be held
accountable for the development /e/ -> /o/ in the context C'eC[~]
(East-Slavic and Lechytic).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...