Re: [tied] Re: Albanian (1)

----- Original Message -----
From: "elmeras2000" <jer@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 1:27 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Albanian (1)


> Sure the reasoning is not new, but is it valid? How can you know
> that the stop system of the common prestage of the Satem languages
> was short-lived? And if you can, what does that precisely mean? Can
> you know that the time span between PIE and Proto-Satem, which you
> are in essence introducing, was longer than the period of stability
> of the Satem stop system?

As for introducing Proto-Satem, yes, that's what I'd like to do. I think the
idea is defensible (as opposed to Proto-Centum), since the Satem shift, if
unconditioned, is sufficiently characteristic to serve as a common
innovation defining a genetic grouping. Even the geographical distribution
of the Satem languages is consistent with a scenario that assumes their
common origin. I don't think "Common Satem" stability lasted very long, or
we would find a larger number of shared innovations (especially phonological
ones, which I take to be of far greater diagnostic value than, say, shared
vocabulary).

> Even more important: Can you know that the putative prestage of
> equlibrium from which Proto-Satem is moving away, was present in
> PIE? How can you know that Proto-Satem and PIE were not identical? I
> can derive all the stop systems of the IE languages from your Proto-
> Satem if I want to. How can we know that is not correct?

> With the glottalics you apparently accept that the beautiful
> prestage can be a prestage of the protolanguage. What happened to
> that option in the case of the velars?

It's just a matter of relative plausibility. I realise full well that my
Proto-Satem is other people's PIE, but it's easier for me to accept a single
shift of *k : *k_ > *k' : *k in Proto-Satem than the reverse shift
happening independently in the various Centum groups. Any phonetician can
confirm that for purely physical reasons the affrication of [k'] is
practically inevitable. (I was once surprised when a Canadian phonologist
who ran a phonetics class I attended found my Polish [k'] strongly
affricated, but I had to admit he was right.) The development of [k'] into a
coronal affricate or fricative is therefore far more natural than its
retraction. That's my reason for believing that those languages that show
velar [k] for PIE *k^ never has a palatal stop in the first place.

> Your scenario that PIE did not have palatals may have something
> attractive about it as you relate the story. Yet, if the three kinds
> of velars came about by transfer of features from a once
> differentiated vocalism which were later neutralized, then the
> palatals must be older than the protolanguage. And in that case I
> cannot see what is gained by wiping them out of PIE.

I'm not convinced that the Satem palatality of *k^ is due to feature
transfer. To me, Satemisition looks more like a typical sound shift -- the
elimination of uvulars by fronting the whole system. What we gain is
typological plausibility.

Piotr