> The falling together of *k and *kW can occur outside the Satem
group as well
> (Tocharian is a good example) and therefore cannot be regarded as a
> distinctly Satem feature. Nor does the common-or-garden variety of
> positional palatalisation (before front vowels) count as Satem, and
I
> believe what we have in Phrygian is basically just that.
>
> Piotr
I know you believe there is some ontological difference between
garden variety palatalisation plus paradigm regularisation on the one
hand and satemisation on the other. I know we discussed this before,
but what are your reasons for assuming that? Or, stated differently,
if the Phrygians had regularised their paradigms (in the satem
direction) in what way would Phrygian then not have been a satem
language?
Come to think of it, since all the branches of IE lost the laryngeals
sooner or later, it seems that all the IE we know is "IE with an
accent". Suppose the original IE had stem variation k/k', kW/k etc
(and, as we know, there exist IE languages today with stem
variation), wouldn't we expect overrun populations to botch the
paradigms (and even cause the elites to set theirs Panini's to work?
The Babel myth of the degeneration of language is an old one.
Torsten