Re: [tied] Thoughts on the existence of *H1

----- Original Message -----

From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 7:36 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Thoughts on the existence of *H1

> The argument for Common Slavic */r./ is exactly equivalent to your argument for PIE */r./.  Why would Slavic */r./ not simply continue PIE */r./?

Because it comes in two phonemic flavours -- "palatal" and "hard" (same for syllabic laterals). The only reasonable explanation of their existence I can think of is that the palatalised syllabic liquids derive from pre-Slavic *iR and the non-palatalised ones from *uR -- sequences evidenced by Baltic. Parallelly, syllabic nasals first became Balto-Slavic *iN/*uN, and only later developed into nasal vowels.

 

Changes of *VR sequences into syllabic liquids and the "dissociation" of the latter back into *VR are part of the natural life cycle of liquids. Note that some of the Czech syllabic liquids are secondary, e.g. krtek 'little mole', the hero of Nohavica's song, comes from *krUt-Uk-U.

 

Piotr