Re: [tied] Greek labiovelars

---

From:  Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...>
Reply-To:  cybalist@yahoogroups.com
To:  cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Subject:  Re: [tied] Greek labiovelars
Date:  Tue, 21 Mar 2006 00:29:25 +0100
>On Mon, 20 Mar 2006 20:30:16 +0100 (CET), Mate Kapovi�
><mkapovic@...> wrote:
>
> >I seem to remember on the other hand that there were claims that
> >Egyptian [g] for the Classic Arabic [dz^] is an archaism not an
> >innovation so these developments need not be the same for all the
> >Arabic dialects...
>
>I used to think Egyptian [g] was an archaism, but a
>discussion about this on sci.lang many years ago left me
>convinced that this is not the case.  The Egyptian
>pronunciation is an innovation, and a rare case of phonetic
>"regression", so to speak.  The source was obviously not the
>affricate [dz^], but a Common Arabic palatal stop [g^] (~
>Hung. <gy>), which usually developed into the [dz^] or [z^]
>of most Arabic dialects, but in Egypt reverted to [g].  I
>believe the original pronunciation as a palatal stop is
>still current in some dialects of the Arabian peninsula.
>
>=======================
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
>mcv@...
>
>
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This is very interesting, as it provides an example of the regular change of an originally palatal plosive to a velar plosive -- which is what classical IE theory asks us to believe happened in the case of western IE languages like Greek, Latin, Germanic, and Celtic.  So perhaps the palatal plosives were indeed original, and not a special development of original velars in eastern IE languages (excluding Tocharian)?  Egyptian seems to prove that it is possible, if Miguel Vidal's ideas are the correct interpretation.

Andrew Jarrette