Re: [TIED] Itchy and Scratchy Stops

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

From: Glen Gordon

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2000 7:24 AM

Subject: Re: [TIED] Itchy and Scratchy Stops

>While such etymologies are a little on the fanciful side, I don't >think
>PIE *-b- was completely absent, though it was definitely very >rare (a fact
>which also calls for an explanation).

I don't understand your reasoning. Whether **-b- (or rather *p*/*p:) is rare
or is completely absent is an irrelevant issue. The same need for
explanation, as you say, is present regardless. This would mean that even if
we were to find the elusive **b, nothing would change until we found an
abundance of it. (Not gonna happen...)

 

Let's stick with *b as the time-honoured standard spelling, whatever the phonetic reality (you like [p:], I fancy a laryngealised stop, both of which could plausibly have developed from [p’]; we agree at least that the sound is neither plain voiced, nor ejective). Its marginal presence is not quite an irrelevant issue. Actually, I think it might strengthen your case for a pre-PIE loss of *p’ if the gap could be shown to have undergone PARTIAL patching during the interval between that loss and the disintegration of PIE. This is what should realistically be expected: not complete absence, but limited presence here and there as a marginal phoneme - like English /ʒ/, for example, which has a defective distribution, no Old English source, and seems to be the rarest English consonantal phoneme by far, but nevertheless does its job as a gap-filler (the voiced counterpart of /ʃ/).

  

>Could you refresh my memory as regards your proposed etymology for the
> >"apple" word with postulated *-ml- > *-bl-?

It was *(s)amlu- and it's not really _my_ etymology but it sounds clever
enough to adopt. This word is irrelevant to the topic of *-b- as well, since
the IE **b is an illusion in this case. Coincidently there are similar words
in Altaic for "fruit". I have to check a Turkish dictionary but I remember
/alim/.

 

And *(s)amlu is...? And what's this optional *s? Talking of illusions, "alim ~ samlu" doesn't look too good. With so much metathetic freedom you might just as well add lemon as a cognate ;) . OK, it's getting late here and "apple" requires some space and time, so I'll leave it till tomorrow.

 

Piotr