Re: [TIED] Itchy and Scratchy Stops

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

From: Glen Gordon

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Saturday, May 27, 2000 6:20 AM

Subject: Re: [TIED] Itchy and Scratchy Stops

 

OK. I'm just trying to clarify some details, including phonetic and chronological ones. Let me quote what Glen Gordon wrote the other day:

 

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.

 

Now a person purporting to be the same Glen Gordon writes:

 

Bomhard reconstructs *p? and is something I do not object to [...]. In Eurasiatic, the ejectives became tense stops and the resultant *p: was lost at around 12,000 BCE, merging with plain voiceless *p.

 

Do you wonder I feel confused? The misunderstanding seems to be all between the two Gordons. If the absence of *p: isn't explained by the earlier absence of *p', what is it explained by? The typological argument evaporates: languages with "fortis" consonants don't disfavour labials, and why indeed should they? The assumed merger of *p: and *p becomes an ad hoc solution.

 

Piotr

 

 

---

 

Glen II writes:

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.