[tied] Re: Albanian (1)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> It's [...] easier for me to accept a single
> shift of *k : *k_ > *k' : *k in Proto-Satem than the reverse

shift

> happening independently in the various Centum groups. Any

phonetician can

> confirm that for purely physical reasons the affrication of [k'] is
> practically inevitable. (I was once surprised when a Canadian

phonologist

> who ran a phonetics class I attended found my Polish [k'] strongly
> affricated, but I had to admit he was right.) The development of

[k'] into a

> coronal affricate or fricative is therefore far more natural than

its

> retraction. That's my reason for believing that those languages

that show

> velar [k] for PIE *k^ never had a palatal stop in the first place.

I think this causes problems for the Centum languages. I do not much
like the uvular value you are led to ascribe to the "plain velars".
It is a phonetic value we never find in the daughter languages,
posited *against* their unanímous testimony. Can we really just
assume that the "velars" were uvulars that changed into velars
everywhere? It seems to be against the way we usually work. Still, I
cannot disprove it.

I won't hurt your national pride, but I am a native speaker of a
language that turned around and depalatalized kj and gj.

In the end, the issue is a small one; we agree there were three
series, and probably also that Albanian may be distinguishing them
under favourable conditions.

Jens