Re: [TIED] Itchy and Scratchy Stops

----- Original Message -----

From: Glen Gordon

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 11:48 PM

Subject: Re: [TIED] Beekes' PIE Consonants & Glottalized Consonants.

Glen writes:

The fortis stops would be derived from the glottalic stops and so the
arguement for the loss of *p? (and hence the lack of later *p:) still holds.
Your question is already answered.

 

 

Is it? Hm, see below.

In fact, I understand that this change took place well beyond any
IndoTyrrhenian or Steppe stage. If we are to accept that IE is more closely
related to Uralic or Altaic, we should also note that ejectives are nowhere
to be seen in those languages. Nor do we even find ejectives in the more
remote languages that are associated with IE in the general Nostratic
Hypothesis such as Sumerian, Elamite or Dravidian.

 

 

 

But the Kartvelian languages have some of the most typical and best known consonant systems with large ejective inventories.

 

 

I presume that this is
because the ejective->fortis shift took place within the Eurasiatic stage c.
12,000 BCE (I don't think IE existed that far back! :P)

 

 

 

Now this is what worries me about the theory that the labial gap in the "mediae" series is a consequence of their having ejective ancestors at a more remote stage. According to your chronology several millennia elapsed between the ejective-to-fortis shift and your Middle (not to mention Common) IE. That's surely enough time to patch any gap for which there is no immediate phonetic justification. Unmotivated empty slots don't live long.

 

If *b (your *p:) was nonexistent or very rare in PIE, then English should have no p (except perhaps in a few words like apple, lip or deep, which have non-Germanic cognates, and of course in the cluster sp). But even apart from recent Latinate borrowings, occurrences of *p were pouring in through loans, onomatopoeia, newly coined words, etc., already in Proto-Germanic times. They even sneaked into the strong verb system (creep, leap, reap, slip, shape, scrape, step, sleep, sweep, all of them strong in Germanic, not to mention obsolete words like OE weorpan 'throw', pleon 'risk', drepan 'strike').

Or take the long open vowel [a:] in English. Now and then in the history of the language a sound change came along and shifted it away from the open central position, creating an empty slot. Every time this happened, the vacuum was immediately filled by a newly created /a:/ phoneme (e.g. Middle English open-syllable lengthening filled the gap created by the retraction and rounding of Old English /a:/).

 

In languages which have the kind of stop you describe as "fortis", labials are as common as other points of articulation. Why should a Eurasiatic phonotactic constraint have remained in force thousands of years after the justification for it had disappeared? BTW, there was p galore in Etruscan. Whatever the reason for the (near-)absence of *b in PIE, we can't blame it on Eurasiatic or even Steppe. It must have something to do with PIE phonetics.

>Could you be more specific about "hard"/"fortis"?

In comparison to the let-loose phonemes like *t with aspiration and *d with
voicing, the phoneme *t: was very restricted in both aspiration and voicing.
Hence this set is "fortis" as opposed to lenis (unrestricted) like *t and
*d.

>How did the fortis stops differ articulatorily and acoustically from >plain
>voiceless ones?

Aspiration.

 

 

Thanks, now I see what you mean. The term "fortis" is a bit informal and is used in at least two senses in phonetics. Most often it refers to increased respiratory energy in the production of a consonant; its primary physical correlate is heightened subglottal pressure, often combined with muscular tension in the walls of the vocal tract. Such a "fortis" stop normally has a strong release burst amounting to aspiration. But there is another legal meaning, closer to your usage: some phoneticians use "fortis" to refer to increased articulatory energy, manifesting itself as higher muscular activation level, a more abrupt closure, a stronger burst (usually), but first and foremost as greater duration. If that's what you mean, your diactritic (:) is well chosen, since "fortis" (in this sense) is virtually synonymous with "long" (I mean long, not merely double).

 

There are quite a few languages (LuGanda, Pattani Malay, the Dagestanian family) which have distinctive long consonant phonemes (including stops) also in word-initial position, so no-one can accuse you of proposing an impossible system. Your scenarios of branch developments look plausible and certainly merit serious discussion; at any rate they don't add new difficulties to those already created by the "glottalic theory".

 

Your account of *t: > *d is a bit lame, I'm afraid, and not quite accurate on the factual side. For one thing, *d is the most frequent reflex also in those branches which have *dH > *d. Thus, for example, *dH and *d (your *d and *t:) merged in all Celtic groups, Baltic, Slavic and Albanian, and ultimately also in Tocharian (Iranian doesn't count, as it identified the two series in post-Proto-Aryan times, simplifying an Indic-type four-way system; and Anatolian stop values are too insecure to be included). In other words *t: did not become *d just because it was free to do so. It did so even if it was heading for a merger.

 

 

>And if originally voiceless, how did they become voiced in
>so many branches?

Well that's the same question for the glottalic theory except that their
transition is a little easier without the glottalic quality to have to
contend with.

In Germanic for instance:
     *d  -> *d   (no change)
     *t: -> *t   (aspiration becomes optional)
     *t  -> *T   (softening to fricatives)

... not a very huge change here.

Since *d was "lenis" or unrestricted, it could be easily heavily "breathed"
or murmured as a way in which to dissimilate as much as possible from *t:
(hence *d -> *dh). Whereas *t: (traditional *d) was very strictly inaspirate
AND unvoiced to avoid any merger with *d (traditional *dh).

Once the shift of *d to *dh took place, voicing became optional for *t:
(hence *t: was free to become a simpler restricted *d). Obviously, we have a
greater tendency for *t: to become *d in dialects where *d becomes *dh.

     *d  -> *dh  (murmuring becomes the norm)
     *t: -> *d   (voicing occurs as a form of simplification)
     *t  -> *t   (aspiration becomes optional
                  once the contrastive *t: no longer exists)

 

 

I suppose *dH was murmured (breathy voiced), given its propensity to change into a fricative or an aspirated stop -- probably a sound like Hindi dh but less "aspirated" (with a shorter onset time for modal voice). I hold no strong views on the nature of *d, except that it isn't very likely to have been a plain [d], given its restricted occurrence. I offered its reconstruction as a creaky voiced stop mainly for the sake of discussion, but such a reconstruction has its merits. First, it easily accounts for the attested reflexes. Secondly, it's plausible from the typological point of view. If we view glottal stricture as a phonetic dimension stretching from "very open" to "closed', we get the following spectrum of phonologically relevant phonation types ("slack" and "stiff" are really reducible to variants of "breathy" and "creaky", respectively):

voiceless >> breathy >> modal >> creaky >> glottal stop

The three phonation types between the extremes represent various kinds of "voice". Now if a phonological system has three series of stops differing only in phonation (rather than glottal timing, duration, or airstream mechanism) and two of them are voiced, "breathy" and "creaky" contrast more saliently than either possible pair involving "plain" (modal) voiced stops.

 

Piotr