Re: [tied] Re: Hittite preterites

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen [mailto:jer@...]
> Sent: Friday, April 25, 2003 12:36 AM
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Hittite preterites
>
> I don't think any of us knows how much coarticulation there
> was in PIE phonetics. Without thinking too much about that
> point, I have myself on an earlier occasion reached the
> clarification that a sequence -VHyCV- was regularly
> metathesized to -VyHCV-. The basic reason is the working of
> Hirt's Law retracting the accent in such sequences. Hirt's
> law is then always triggered by a syllable-final asyllabic
> laryngeal, and it only retracts the ictus from the
> immediately following syllable. I therefore simply accepted
> the vocalism as /a/, not by coloration, but underlyingly.

Regular metathesis points to some phonotactic constraint (like *erC in
Proto-Slavic and -SK-C > -KS-C- in Lithuanian). Having assumed for a
moment that laryngeals are less sonorous than (proper) glides (though
it's definitely not always the case, since in the environment where
there's a free choice it's the laryngeal and not the glide which is
sometimes syllabified) one could formulate such a constraint in terms of
raising (onset-nucleus) - falling (nucleus-coda) sonority contour of a
syllable. In that case, the problem is why the language has preferred to
medicate the unacceptable [-VHj.CV-] with a little help of metathesis
rather than simply syllabifyng the glide ([-V.Hi.CV-])? Because Ockham
forbids to multiply syllables sine necessitate et sine ratione?

Sergei