--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Knut
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 11:07 PM
> Subject: Re: [tied] Finnish hevonen "horse"
>
> > And what actually is the difference between a labiovelar and the
sequence kW? In either case, the sequence kw could very easily
develope into a labiovelar.
>
> *kW is a unitary phoneme and a single segment (labiovelar stop),
whereas *k^w is a cluster of two phonemes realised as two segments
(palato-velar stop plus labiovelar approximant). The two are
consistently distinguished in all Satem languages (e.g. in Slavic *kW
> *k but *k^w > *sv), and were evidently kept distinct in PIE, though
they admittedly merged later in several branches, partly or
completely.
Well
Of course, it is neccessary to establish rules based om several
examples. But- I think we must be contented with rules thet are not
as exact as the rules you can establish inside indoeuropean for the
time being, when working at the "nostratic" level. And then refine
them later, if possible. An example of such a rule could be
IE s/t - Ur s/t. (where t could be plain or aspirated)You find a
lot of examples of this rule, in the core vocabolary, and they are
very easy to find. But for the time being it is very difficult to
find out if the "s" is an original "s" or a softening of t. The
reason for this is simply that the transformation t>s is very common,
but often it is partial, establishing variants of the same element.
Then by analogy one of the variants often are suppressed,
reestablishing the original t, or making s universal.
Someone have tried to establish the rules.
Fu tt - Iu t< Nostratic tt
Fu t - Iu s< Nostratic t
Fu s - Iu s< Nostratic s
But as far as I know, those are controversial.
But my whole point is as follows; By looking at too exact
correspondances, you easily overlook genetic relationships.