Piotr:
> My question is, is there any ground for claiming that there was >indeed
>a labial gap in the ejective series in Proto-Nostratic?
Has there been a misunderstanding?
Since I follow the same phonological system laid out by Bomhard (save some
objections towards unnecessary phonemes like the palatal series, lateral
affricate series and fricatives), I'm not one to ask this question without
agreeing with you completely. Bomhard reconstructs *p? and is something I do
not object to.
Do you think I believe that Nostratic had no labial ejective? I _do_ believe
that there was a labial ejective in Nostratic, passed down to Kartvelian and
AA.
>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).
Is there another Gordon I'm not aware of? :) I'm going to clarify: Nostratic
HAD a labial ejective (c.15,000 BCE). In Eurasiatic, the ejectives became
tense stops and the resultant *p: was lost at around 12,000 BCE, merging
with plain voiceless *p. The gap found in IE is not directly from Nostratic
but rather derives from the state found in _Eurasiatic_, the term I use to
define the Nostratic subgroup to which Sumerian, ElamoDravidian and Steppe
belong, void of any originally Greenbergian sense.
Or have I misunderstood your arguement? I'm feeling sleepy today...
- gLeN
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