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

From: Mate Kapović
Message: 30109
Date: 2004-01-27

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer" <mcv@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2004 4:45 AM
Subject: Re: The palatal sham :) (Re: [tied] Re: Albanian (1))


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

How so?

> 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.

As I sadi, a-colouring and uvularity can be pre-IE and that aside I think
there was no real phoneme *a in PIE so the words reconstructed with "PIE"
*ka are not very convincing. All these words are mostly expressive, younger,
not widely spread, loaned etc. So a-colouring is not a really strong
argument.

> 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'/.

I believe that *h1, *h2 and *h3 were *x', *x and *xW and many others do.

Mate