Re: [tied] Re: the glottalic theory

On Thu, 14 Nov 2002 15:05:43 -0000, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@..., Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer@...> wrote:
>> Guys, you can't mean this. The Danish stød rule is very simple and
>of no
>> consequence for IE...
>
>It's not as bad as it looks. Miguel is (or was) looking for a
>plausible sound change and reasonable prior phonological constraints
>that will result in some words starting with a glottalised plosive,
>some with a glottalised plosive elsewhere, other words with only
>unglottalised plosives, and no words having two glottalised plosives,
>or at least not flanking the same vowel.

I was trying to establish a link between tones and consonantal
laryngeal settings, which can be arranged in the sequence:

/h/ ~ aspirated --> voiceless --> breathy voice (murmur) --> slack
voice --> modal voice --> stiff voice --> creaky voice (laryngealized)
--> /?/

The frequency goes from low to high as the vocal chords go from far
apart (/h/) to close together (/?/) [at least for the voiced part of
the sequence: breathy --> creaky], so a link with low/high tone would
be natural.

We have cases of tone becoming laryngeal setting [glottal stop] (e.g.
Latvian), and of laryngeal setting becoming tone (e.g. Panjabi).

>So far, we have had no success in glottalising initial plosives.

I was wondering if someone had access to the following article:

Hombert, J.-M., Ohala, J., &. W. Ewan. (1979). Phonetic explanations
for the development of tones, Language 55(1), 37-58.

>I thought Miguel had a scheme for reconciling the Bomhard and IS
>Nostratic correspondences for PIE (by splitting PIE *d etc) but it
>now seems not.

I'd have to look at that again.

>Incidentally, is having /?t/ and /?k/ but not /?p/ plausible? With
>voiced pre-glottalised plosives, the natural gap seems to be to
>lack /?g/ rather than /?b/, which does not suit us at all.

In the labials, the gap (if any) is usually in the voiceless sphere
([ph], [p'], [p] missing), while in the velars/uvulars it's usually in
the voiced sphere ([G], [g] missing). I see no reason to think it
would different for pre-glottalized plosives.


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