Richard:
>>One of the features of PIE that the glottalic theory claims to
>>explain is that plain voiced plosives do not occur in suffixes. How
>>valid should we treat this observation, given four counter-examples:
>
>I think the claim is to explain the rarity of plained voiced plosives in
>grammatical affixes, not their total absence.
Yes, the rarity.
Things are happier once we first realize that IE never had
ejectives. At best, fortis and lenis stops. The voicing of
fortis stops occured late in IE (in the last 1000 years of
its development). Pronominal neuter singular *-d as well
as ablative singular *-d were once fortis stops, not ejectives
and the neuter only developed in the Late IE period anyways
via the clipping of a suffixed inanimate demonstrative *-t&
to *-t: (and then to voiced *-d). The ablative was once *-ate
with plain voiceless *t.
The root extensions like *-d- are also late, it seems, and I
would hazard a guess that many of them were once attached verbs
(ie: *-dh- < *dheh- "to put").
- gLeN
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