Re: Laryngeal Loss (was Does Koenraad Elst Meet Hock´s Challenge?)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Mon, 16 Dec 2002 11:15:53 -0000, "tgpedersen
> <tgpedersen@...>" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> >Now back to my question: Is loss of laryngeals a sign that there
>was
> >once a substrate?
>
> Not necessarily. Loss of laryngeals is a completely natural process
> which can happen, or not, with or without any external motivation,

and

> at any time. In general, the question of _why_ (some soundchange)
> [happened] / [failed to happen] is unanswerable, especially when
> there's nothing idiosyncratic or peculiar about the change.

*Whew*! Thank you for putting my mind at ease. I thought something
unnatural was going on.

> If things
> *can* happen, they eventually will.

Hm. Perhaps I should buy another lottery ticket.
But it may true. There is a debate going on in my country about the
statistics the falling pattern of open-face sandwiches: Is it true
they always land on the carpet face down?

> Blaming it on substrate influence
> (especially when nothing at all is known about the substrate) only
> begs the question of why the substrate itself had the feature (or
> lacked it). Its own substrate? Etc. etc. and turtles all the way
> down?

Of course there are!
OK, I shall try to put the blame elsewhere in the futurte.

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

Anyway, IE (ie. the non-Anatolian sister language) lost all its
laryngeals, and few of the AfrAs languages did. Eppur' si muove ...

Torsten