Torsten:
>In German /r/ blocks affricatisation of /t/, eg. 'treten' "read",
>not '**zreten'
I love you, Torsten! I was just thinking something similar for IE! :)
After recovering from my brainless *xrtkos blunder (and I shoulda known
better but I was too hasty to word my new theory), I still couldn't
shake the idea of an IE dental stop being retracted in certain positions
to an alveolar position with subsequent resistance of affricatization.
I started thinking more about *xrtkos and I realized that if vocalic
*r were, say, a retroflex or even an alveolar approximant, I could
imagine the following normally dental *t actually being retracted to
an alveolar position in this particular etymon. I'm sure *r was not
dental and even when I pronounce the word with a simple alveolar
approximant (without retroflexing), I still find it hard to resist an
alveolar *t. Could this be a factor?
Thoughts? Have I erred again? I'm waiting for the 50-tonne weight to
fall on my head...
- gLeN
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