Re: [TIED] Itchy and Scratchy Stops

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

From: Glen Gordon

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Sunday, May 28, 2000 1:04 AM

Subject: Re: [TIED] Itchy and Scratchy Stops

After a long and successful perversion of the true meaning behind my
statements...

 

Glen, I much prefer a true meaning clearly expressed in a statement to one lurking behind a statement.

 

I have been assimilated. Your arguement has been subsequently adapted into
my theory. Thus, Eurasiatic retained the _unchanged_ series of ejectives
and, as always, included the Nostratic labial ejective. Sumerian then split
at around 12,000 BCE, preserving *p? as later /b/ (due to the eventual
merger of ejectives with inaspirate stops). The loss of *p? occured
subsequently, followed by the ejective-fortis shift. At this point,
Eurasiatic began fragmenting into ElamoDravidian and Steppe, around 11,000
or 10,000 BCE.

As a result, the suspicious lack of *p: continued on for about six to eight
thousand years until the tense stops were finally converted to plain voiced
stops within Common IE.

Is better?

 

It's certainly much better this way, though I still have doubts about the possibility of a gap surviving for so long, especially in word-medial position. Stops like *p: aren't all that unusual. They may arise not only through gemination or assimilation but also through prosodic processes, as e.g. in Balto-Fennic-Saami gradation. Proto-BFS developed long consonants which may even form clusters with their short counterparts in some modern BFS languages, as in Estonian pappp [pap:p] 'pope' or Saami bapppa [bap:pa] 'priest'. In a language with a missing unmarked member of a consonant series there will be a pressure to fill the gap, and a means of filling it will be found more likely sooner than later.

 

Oh, by the way, before I forget. This leaves some intriguing afterthoughts
about Altaic. If I'm right that voiceless stops were generally softened such
as *t > Altaic *s (explaining the second person), what of our *p?

If *p were softened to an *f or *h as is expected, we would end up with a
complete lack of *p since **p: would have filled this gap if only it
existed! There must have been a resistance to this change and therefore,
while Steppe *t > Altaic *s and Steppe *k (but not *kW) > Altaic *(h), I
suspect that Steppe *p remained untouched as Altaic *p.

I propose:

     Steppe            >      Altaic
     t    k    p              s   (h)   -
     t:   k:   -              t    k    p
     d    g    b              d    g    b

Here, we can see that the gap of the labial tense stop was succesfully
transfered over to the fricative series. Just a thought.

 

I'm not an Altaicist (or a Nostraticist, for that matter), but AFAIK Bomhardian Nostratic *t, *t', *d > Proto-Altaic *tH, *t, *d. The lenition of aspirated stop (e.g. *p>f>x>h>zero, with different positional reflexes) took place independently in various branches but not in PA.

 

Piotr