Satem and desatemisation (was: Albanian (1))

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "elmeras2000" <jer@...> wrote:

> --- 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.

Looking at the phylogeny in Gray & Atkinson, I wonder if it is
plausible that Western IE (Celtic, Italic and Germanic)
is 'desatemised Satem'? However, the position of Greek and Armenian
still remains anomalous.

Richard.