Miguel slurs the following confrontational jibberish:
>It sure isn't "voiceless aspirate". Look it up.
You mean "voiceless INaspirate"...
"Fortis" is a vague term that simply refers to the "strength of
articulation". We can classify this strength using pretty much
any feature (by tension, by aspiration, by voicing, by length,
etceterada...).
I name Mid IE *[t:, k:] the "fortis series" since it is the
descendant of the Nostratic ejective series... and you can't get
more fortis than an ejective :P Plus, these phonemes were once
unvoiced like the *[p, t, k] series. In order to distinguish
two voiceless series, I label *[p, t, k] as "lenis" and *[t:, k:]
as "fortis". It's not a big flippin' deal, Miguel.
Now, although it appears that the fortis series ended up
inaspirate in Late IE, I suspect their tension, at least in medial
positions, was high in Mid IE, like that of a geminate. In final
positions, fortis stops were automatically lenited similar to
the situation with -d in German "Hand" (*-t: > *-t and *-k: > *k).
I will just answer your angry attack concerning the reversal
of fortis-lenis distinctions by saying that this reversal is a
mirage caused by the vagueness of the terms "fortis" and "lenis".
In Late IE typology, we might define *dh as "fortis" and *t/*d as
"lenis" by using +/-aspiration as the defining feature of strength.
If so, of course, from Mid to Late IE, we find *dh has gone from a
lenis to a fortis and *t and *d have gone from fortis to lenis.
My, my, my, how paradoxical... until someone with a rational mind
realizes that the criteria of fortis & lenis has changed midway
through. I'm using +/-length as the defining feature in Mid IE.
Here, look at this, in case you're confused:
Mid IE
voice length aspiration
*t - - +
*t: - + -
*d + - -
Late IE
voice aspiration
*t - -
*d + -
*dh + +
- love gLeN
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