--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer@...>
wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Sep 2003, etherman23 wrote:
>
> Since it was only Greek that looked "chaotic", this conditioning
> has now deprived us of all possibilities of dispensing with
> voiceless aspirates in IE.
If this holds up it may actually solve the problem of the lack of *b
in PIE, at least partially. I once did a statistical analysis of the
occurances of all consonants in PIE. This analysis assumed the
existence of unvoiced aspirates and was based on Pokorny's roots.
While the number of occurances of *b looked low it actually fell
within the 95% confidence interval. This suggests to me that *b was
not particularly infrequent. If there's any mystery here it's
actually *bh being especially frequent. Of course many of the *b
initial roots are disputed and if eliminated from consideration would
drop the presence of *b to especially low levels.