Re: [tied] Re: Is initial *b really rare?

From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 19375
Date: 2003-02-27

On Thu, 27 Feb 2003 09:48:15 -0000, "Richard Wordingham
<richard.wordingham@...>" <richard.wordingham@...>
wrote:

>The glottalic theory sees the standard PIE contrast */t/ ~ */d/ ~
>*/dH/ realised as [t] ~ [t?] ~ [d]. (No sophistry here; I did
>consider citing the standard reconstructions in angle brackets, as
>though PIE were a written language.) Now, there are languages in
>which ejectives and implosives form a single series - implosive at
>the front and ejective at the back.

Hausa comes to mind.

>Another feature is that /b/ can
>have a tendency to be implosive. So, perhaps in isolation, the
>constrast [p] ~ [p?] ~ [b] collapsed as [p?] > [?p] > [?b] and then
>[?b] and [b] merged, as */bH/. This may explain the high frequency
>of PIE */bH/. Presumably the voiced stops became breathy ([d] > [dH]
>etc.) before the other consonants 'deglottalised'.
>There is one minor problem with this. While the natural place for a
>gap in an ejectives series is at the front (missing [p?]), the
>natural gap for an implosive series is at the back (typically missing
>[?g]). The same applies to preglottalised series (to which notations
>such as [?b] properly belong), e.g. Proto-Tai and a few Tai
>dialects. (It isn't simply a matter of voicing or its lack - the
>usual gap in a prenasalised series is at the front, not the back.)

That means that the *b-gap must have originated at a time when we were
still at an ejective stage (*p?). I agree that at the stage *?b, the
labial was the least likely to disappear (we would expect a *g-gap
instead).


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