Me writes:
>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.
Piotr:
> But the Kartvelian languages have some of the most typical and best
> >known consonant systems with large ejective inventories.
Yes. Kartvelian is a Nostratic language but a more remote one. Both
Kartvelian and AfroAsiatic retain the ejectives while Eurasiatic converted
them to fortis stops.
Me:
>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)
Piotr:
> 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.
Not so sure. I know what you're saying but we aren't dealing with a
garden-variety *p as in Germanic but rather *p: which is something not all
that common. I think that these are different scenarios.
The occurence of Germanic *p never derives from an actual IE *b but instead
the phoneme enters the language through borrowings or new developments like
*-ml- > *-bl- > *-pl-, etc. So we have the option of borrowings or phonetic
developments to obtain our much needed *p:.
In the phonetic development arena, I can think of no opportunity for a *p:
to accidentally happen in any earlier stages of IE/Steppe/Eurasiatic except
via a simplification of some consonant cluster. The early typology is
self-evident when comparing all Eurasiatic languages - only medial consonant
clusters occur. The phoneme *p:, if existant, would be medial only. How
might we obtain a medial *p: except perhaps through a very specific
compounding of a word *CVp to a stop-initial stem. Not much productive
opportunity here to fill out the gap even if we were to prove this special
development of *-pC- to *-p:-.
Perhaps then, we might play around with the possibility of borrowing.
Unfortunately, I can't think of a language that IE or its ancestors could
possibly have come across to borrow words with *p:, except for NWC. Can you?
An NEC-IE contact doesn't seem possible. It's hard enough finding ANY human
language with *p:, let alone one that could have influenced IE.
Even so, why should speakers of a *p:-less language expend there energy
borrowing this phoneme when there were much simpler ("slack-ier") phonemes
already available like *p and *b?? This is obviously a different scenario
from Germanic where *p is such a common phoneme in world languages and a
simple one to pronounce. A more important question is: Would the phoneme *p:
be so abundant in any neighbouring language to make it likely of its
adoption into IE as abundantly as *p was with Germanic? I don't think so.
With only NWC as a possibility, I am hard pressed to find a word with *p:
let alone one that could have been borrowed into IE...
However, Bomhard does list Proto-Circassian *p:@y@ "enemy" (a later branch
of NWC) as a potential loan in his "Indo-European and the Nostratic
Hypothesis". He believes that this would have been borrowed into early IE,
becoming *pe:i- "to hurt", directly from the NWC stage. He states that he
had no available works on NWC itself to obtain the more ancient
reconstruction (hence the Circassian items). Regardless, it appears that IE
had an aversion to adopting *p:.
>BTW, there was p galore in Etruscan.
IE *bhi = Etruscan pi. IndoT *b and *p merged to Tyrrhenian *p due to the
regular collapse of voicing constrast. To boot, Tyrrhenian had no aspiration
contrast amongst labial stops since *p: didn't exist. This left a simple *p
as the only labial. Later, Etruscan filled the gap with borrowings with
/ph/.
There are native, basic words like /apa/ and /puia/ with /p/ but I don't
recall anything with /ph/ as part of the basic vocabulary. Well, there is
/semph/, a Semitic word, and Etruscan doesn't distinguish aspirates from
non-aspirates in final position anyway. Oh sure, we can find a "phlethora"
of "ph" words but all of the them seem to be... loanwords. Imagine that.
>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.
It's all nice to throw away my pretty theory (based on many other pretty
theories done by other pretty people) but do you have an alternative pretty
suggestion that works pretty better in regards to pre-IE?
>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).
I'm frankly unsure of whether it is the former definition of fortis or the
latter, and I'm fully conscious of both, so I continue to use the *C:
notation regardless since it's convenient when dealing with many different
pre-IE stages all at once.
> Your account of *t: > *d is a bit lame, I'm afraid,
Ouch. :( I didn't say that a merger of *t: (*d) and *d (*dh) couldn't happen
or didn't happen. Oh well, tough crowd.
> I suppose *dH was murmured (breathy voiced),
Maybe it depends on which "IndoEuropean" you're talking about. Maybe
traditional *dh was first a regular voiced *d and traditional *d was
actually *t: (with longer duration). Once Anatolian split away, the *d
became murmured to *dh and *t: became voiced as a creaky *d. How 'bout them
apples? Problem solved.
Interesting stuff on the glottal stricture phonetic dimension thing.
- gLeN
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