Piotr:
>[...] there is no indication of a temporal gap between those >processes,
>which means that at a certain point the whole system of >phonological
>contrasts was redefined.
But is it not possible that the satem shift happened well
*before* 4000 BCE? I now think of IE as a puddle of ever-converging
and diverging dialects. The "split" is, of course, nothing more
than the state of a part of this dialectal muddle as it stood
approximately 4000 BCE (that is, ignoring the possibility for
surrounding dialect spin-offs from Middle IE, Old IE or other
earlier stages of IE, in order to prevent our brains from exploding).
Piotr spoke earlier of uvularisation and a reinterpretation of
*k^/*k/*kW as *k/*q/*kW to resolve typological problems in IE. If
so, the satem dialect area would have simply "fronted" *k/*q,
forming *k^/*k. A one-step process rather than a messy, two-step
palatalisation + delabialisation event.
Plus, I can't see why this process must necessarily occur *after* the
final fracturing of IE since we all should know by now that IE was
never "unified" as it is traditionally stated. IE would have always
been an area of dialects, no matter how far back in time we go.
Thoughts?
-------------------------------------------------
gLeNny gEe
...wEbDeVEr gOne bEsErK!
home:
http://glen_gordon.tripod.com
email:
glengordon01@...
-------------------------------------------------
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at
http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp