After long meditation, a battle ensued between myself and my internal
devil's advocate. I held up valiantly but my devil's advocate
managed to undermine my confidance by showing me paradox after
paradox amongst Middle IE constructions that showed that, indeed, *H1
is a consonant and likely to be (gulp!) [h] in mediofinal positions
in Late IE.
You see, since instances such as Mid IE *[&m&] become
syllabic *[(&)m] in Late IE, it begs the question where
instances of *[&m&] would come from. Sadly, *H1 as consonant works
best (hence: *[&mh&] > *[(&)mh])... Therefore:
Late IE <- Late MidIE <- Old MidIE
*genheti *k:enhe *k:en?e
*dheheti *dehe *de?e
*pelheti *pelhe *pel?e
So, my new position on *H1 is that it is both an initial glottal
stop and a mediofinal *[h]. Further, the mediofinal *[h] developped
from a glottal stop around 5500 BCE well before all the syllabic
contractions started (and hence no formation of ejectives).
This slightly alters my views on Steppe (which now has medial
glottal stop) and Nostratic. Aaaargh. Damn you, Piotr! I wanted so
much to hold on to my comfortable pet theories.
Now I'm gonna have to figure out how Uralic *kanta- relates to
a new OldIE *k:en?e-...
-------------------------------------------------
Glen Gordon
Webdeveloper
home:
http://glen_gordon.tripod.com
email:
glengordon01@...
ph: (204)797.3267
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