Re: [tied] PIE dorsals

From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
Message: 4973
Date: 2000-12-08

On Fri, 08 Dec 2000 03:15:32 , "Glen Gordon"
<glengordon01@...> wrote:

>Miguel:
>>Looking further towards the chapter on Anatolian in Ramat & Ramat (by
>>Silvia Luraghi), I find HLuw. zurni- "horn"; HLuw azu(wa)- "horse"
>>(Lyc. esbe), Lyc. sñta "100 (1000?)", none of them explicable by the
>>effect of neighbouring front vowels (and Luraghi further adds that *k
>>before *i > zero in Luwian/Lycian, without examples).
>
>Aren't these just examples of a later palatalisation again? Like say,
>*k^ern- (> *zern- ?), *ek^wos (> *ezwa- ?), and *k^emtom (> *zenta ?)

AFAIK, there are no examples of this happening to *k or *kw.

>>I'm not so sure *K's are as rare as all that. Just as an experiment,
>>I counted almost half the Sanskrit entries starting with k- (the ka-
>>and ka:-'s, as a matter of fact) in the index to IEW, for a total of
>>175 words and morphemes. 19 of them were only referred to from
>>outside the *k/*k^ or *kw pages. 30 were referred to from the *kw
>>pages, 126 from the *k/*k^ pages. That's four times as many *k-'s as
>>*kw-'s. I counted 117 Sanskrit forms starting with s'a-/s'a:-.
>
>Erh, shouldn't that be: 126 of _*k and *k^ COMBINED_ are four times as many
>as the *kw-'s??

No. If it gives ka- in Sanskrit, it can't, by definition, be *k^.
The combined number is 126+117 (approximately).

>Isn't that what Piotr said, Miguel? By the way, why is there
>only *k/*k^ pages? Shouldn't *k and *k^ have their own seperate pages if
>they are truely distinct phonemes? :)

No. Some words are only attested in the centum languages.

>>Even if the *k-set contains more loanwords, onomatopoeia and >Pokornian
>>mistakes than the *k^ and *kw sets (which might be true), >all it shows is
>>that the unnatural "gap" in the unmarked member (if >due to a phonological
>>event in pre-PIE) tended to be filled with >borrowings and onomatopoeic
>>formations (I'll leave Pokorny out of >this), just as we would expect (the
>>same happened with the *b gap).
>
>Indeed. May we also note that IE *b doesn't exist either.

You're saying there was no *k?

>>What is Meillet's (or Kortlandt's) explanation for the position >before
>>non-syllabic *u (*k^u- vs. *ku- [vs. *kw-])? Without an >original *k^ ~ *k
>>opposition, the reflexes in the different languages >become totally
>>incomprehensible (they're difficult enough *with* *k ~ >*k^).
>
>Oh god, not *k^wo:n (or *k^uo:n) again. This is palatalisation followed by
>unstressed front vowel to zero. Originally, the *k^ is to derive from
>earlier *k.

I'm so glad you agree with me. Loss of front (unstressed) vowel
caused palatalization of *k to *k^ in pre-PIE, while the parallel loss
of (unstressed) back and neutral vowels produced *kw and *k, leading
to the system we find in PIE.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...