Re: The palatal sham :) (Re: [tied] Re: Albanian (1))

On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 02:13:17 +0100, Mate Kapović <mkapovic@...> wrote:

>> Luwian doesn't prove much, beyond the fact that *k^ and *k must still have
>> been distinguished in Proto-Anatolian (so no change there from PIE).
>
>Luwian proves that in Proto-Anatolian *k, *k' and *kw have been
>distinguished. It also proves that *k' > *k IS POSSIBLE since it obviously
>happened for instance in Hittite. It also points again to the palat(ised)
>nature of *k' and not to the uvularity of *k.

There is no change here between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Anatolian, so
Hittite and Luwian prove nothing more than Latin and Avestan.

>>If *k^ was velar, palatalization before front vowels is fully as
>> expected, and if *k was uvular, that would neatly explain why it was not
>> palatalized before front vowels.
>
>Yeah, that would be neat but unfortunately there is not a one empyrical
>evidence for uvularity.

Yes there is: a-colouring. If the original system had been /k/ vs. /k'/
(unpalatalized/palatalized), we would not have had /a/-colouring in the
neighbourhood of the unpalatalized member. Non-palatalization is
equivalent to velarization (as in Russian), and would at best have produced
/u/-colouring of the vowel, not /a/-colouring.

Furthermore, I have some doubts about the plausability of a system that has
palatalization of the velar stops only. Unlike labialization, which is
often lost everywhere except in the velars, palatalization can be expected
to persist in the coronals as well. But where are PIE */n'/, */s'/, */t'/
etc.? For that matter, where is the palatalized velar fricative? We can
be pretty confident that *h3 was labialized, like *kW, *hW and *ghW, but
there doesn't seem to be a */x'/.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...