From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
Message: 27788
Date: 2003-11-28
On Fri, 28 Nov 2003, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:
[...]
> >> Maybe what I mean will become clearer if I use a purely phonetic
> example
> >> instead of a morphophonetic.
> >>
> >> Suppose we have a proto-language with the phoneme /k/. The theory is
> >> that
> >> a soundlaw applies, turning /k/ into /c^/ under certain conditions
> (say,
> >> before front vowels). It's supposed that there was no phoneme /c^/ to
> >> begin with, so it's a split, no merger involved.
> >>
> >> Now what we actually find is one language, say Tofarian, which has /k/
> >> everywhere. Another language, Lifuanian, has /c^/ everywhere. The
> other
> >> daughter languages show the distribution /c^/ before front vowel, /k/
> >> before back, with perhaps some 10% exceptions.
> >>
> >> How believable is the theory?
[...]
> You're still not getting the point. I give up.
It's true I'm not getting a point here. But you can easily get me to
declare that the theory you sketch is not very believable. I am eager to
here about the relevance of this.
Jens