Re: [TIED] Itchy and Scratchy Stops

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

From: Glen Gordon

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2000 11:29 PM

Subject: Re: [TIED] Itchy and Scratchy Stops

 

Glen,

I’d like to hear your opinion on the following objection to a ‘glottalic’ explanation of the missing member of the labial series.

The theory that the gap reflects a missing labial ejective at some remoter historical stage is based on a typological argument first formulated by Martinet in the 1950s, as far as I’m aware, and made widely known by Hopper and Gamkrelidze: ejectives favour posterior places of articulation, then coronal, and finally labial; indeed, there are consonant inventories lacking the labial member of an ejective series. Therefore, if Proto-Nostratic had ejective stops, it was only natural that the labial slot in the series should not have been filled. The gap was then passed on all the way down to PIE, even if Proto-Nostratic ejectives had shifted into ‘tense’ stops in the meantime, as proposed by Starostin, Shevoroshkin and Gordon among others (of course the standard version of the glottalic theory posits ejectives for PIE).

But lo! when asked to give real-life examples of systems with a missing labial ejective, glottalists mention Haida or Navajo, or unspecified ‘Caucasian languages’ (Gamkrelidze) rather than anything indisputably Nostratic. It must be borne in mind that lacking a labial is NOT a universal property of ejective inventories. In fact, most of those I’ve examined do contain a labial. On closer inspection it turns out that the labial gap Gamkrelidze alludes to can be found in some North Caucasian (that is, non-Nostratic) languages (notwithstanding which, *p’ is reconstructed for Proto-NC). In the Kartvelian languages, claimed to be Nostratic, the ejective inventories are embarrassingly complete.

Gamkrelidze attaches some importance to the fact that there is a labial gap in the Semitic ‘emphatic series’, often regarded as reflexes of Proto-Afroasiatic ejectives. However, the Semitic emphatics don’t constitute a series parallel to the voiceless and voiced obstruents; they are pharyngealised coronals (and ONLY coronals), with voiceless : voiced distinctions. Their systemic function doesn’t reflect that of Proto-AA ejectives, even if they derive from them. Semitic has uvular and pharyngeal obstruents, which pattern in certain respects with pharyngealised coronals, but that’s because they all share the same postvelar place-of-articulation component, not because they represent a special mode of consonant production. In other words, Gamkrelidze points to a gap in a non-existent series. Incidentally, ejective *p’ is reconstructed for Proto-AA and has distinct reflexes in the African subfamilies of Afroasiatic.

My question is, is there any ground for claiming that there was indeed a labial gap in the ejective series in Proto-Nostratic?

Piotr