Miguel:
>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.
Argh. Perhaps I misunderstood your viewpoint, which is possible because I
always look at IndoEuropean through the angle of the earliest stages of IE
more than later stages (I think of IE in terms of two genders and not three,
for example). I am very sure that *k^ is ultimately the result of an
allophonic variation of *k.
I presume then that you are saying that *k and *k^ are distinct phonemes in
some late IE stage (possibly postIE stage) and that they were originally the
result of allophonic variation of plain *k? If this is correct, then we do
agree.
Still, as for IE itself having these two distinct velars, to say that *k^ is
a distinct phoneme in IE means that one has to be sure that *ku- and *k^u-,
the only interpretational minimal pairs for "distinctness" that I'm aware
of, were indeed pronounced */ku/ and */k^u/, not just */k^Iw/- versus
*/kUw/-, say. Afterall, we both agree that *k^wo:n was pronounced with two
syllables at some point in IE. If you could find blatant examples of widely
attested IE *k (as opposed to *k^) within the same syllable as a _front_
vowel like *e or *a, there'd be a case. AFAIK, there isn't such an example
and we have *ek^- in *ek^wos and *dek^- in *dek^m, just like we should have
if *k and *k^ are only allophones.
- gLeN
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