Re: [tied] Is initial *b really rare?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <petegray@...> wrote:

> Partly it's to do with the nature of the words that show it (many
> are "babble-words"),

I'm going to look further into this later on. It seems a common
criticism.

> and partly to do with the nature of the attestation.

This is going to be a little tougher to investigate due to a lack of
resources. Oh well.

> There are very few - perhaps only two - which can be shown to
> certainly PIE *bel and *bak). There are strong reasons for
> resisting the rest as good PIE words.
>
> We have (initial, medial final):
>
> bab bab badyos baita bak bal bamb band bata bau bdel be: bed bed
> bel (x2) bend bu (x3) bistle blat ble: blou bol brangh brukw bronk
>
> abel baba cerbero abo(n)
>
> ab bab bamb dumb dheb ereb jab gheub ghreib g'hemb k'elb k'eub kob
> lab leb plab remb reub (s)kamb skeub skwerb (s)nerb treb ub wab
>
> /b/ occurs 28 times as an initial letter in Bird's list of
> Pokorny's basic roots. Compare g' (20 times initially), gwh (12
> times initially), kw (22 times initially).

What I've done is count the occurances of all initial stops and
constructed a 98% confidence interval for them. The result is,
roughly and from memory, (22,55). This analysis puts *b- squarely in
the normal category. Interestingly p, t, k, and bh all fall well
outside this range. I can understand the unvoiced stops, but bh is a
real anomaly, IMO.