On Fri, 15 Nov 2002 17:55:56 +0100 (MET), Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
<
jer@...> wrote:
>On Fri, 15 Nov 2002, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:
>
>> [...]
>> The *b gap and the non-existence in UPSID of ['gW] indicate that if
>> the glottalic theory is corrrect, the sounds in question must have
>> been voiceless ejectives, not voiced implosives. That's to say at the
>> _phonetic_ level, not necessarily the _phonological_ level. We may
>> have had /t/, /'d/, /dh/ realized as fortis [t:], ejective [t'] (or
>> preglottalzied [?t]), aspirated [th].
>
>That's sophistery! What *can* it mean in sane terms?
I wasn't seriously suggesting such a phonological analysis, but I
thought I'd better add the qualification in view of : "It does not
matter what status the two letter with which I write /th/ have, for
the whole business of "phonological typology" is one of - phonetics!
Look through the many sound systems given by Ruhlen, they are all
simply phonetic and not based on any deeper analysis, so phonetic is
the level the IE stops should be assessed on".
What it *can* mean is something like what we have in English, where
/t/ and /d/ are realized as [th] and [t] (amongst other allophones).
But I prefer a diachronic analysis where /t:/, /t?/, /th/ later become
/t/, /d/, /dh/.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...