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

----- Original Message -----
From: "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2004 6:07 AM
Subject: Re: The palatal sham :) (Re: [tied] Re: Albanian (1))
> I guess it depends on whether your strategy is to refuse to examine
> anything outside of Proto-IE or not. However, that kind of thinking
> denies us answers because many answers on Proto-IE do lie outside
> of Proto-IE. As I said, there is a general borrowing pattern with
> regards to both "6" and "7" which IE is part of. I gave examples that
> show this, making the foreign nature of *sweks especially clear over
> and above other facts that betray this truth: undeclinable, an
> indivisible root, yet phonetically uncharacteristic of a native
indivisible
> root.

And how would you decline or divide *penkwe? This means nothing.

> Unfortunately, I've never come across the word for "six" in
> Proto-Semitic in any book. Even on zompist.com, with all its lists of
> numerals from 1 to 10 in various languages, protolanguages and
> conlangs, there is no mention of the reconstructed numeral for "six"
> in Semitic even though it surely must have existed based on the
> comparative data. Miguel had quoted something to the effect of
> *s^idTu-. Whatever one chooses for the reconstruction, it must
> be a stop (probably dental) + fricative in that position which IE *-ks
> is attempting to reflect. Nothing in Semitic shows anything that
> can be construed as "palatal" in this position so why on earth
> would IE reflect it with *-k^s? Why not *-ks?

Miguel sugested that in PIE *ts (from his *sWets(W)) could have been
transformed to *ks. But it would make more sense that *ts would go to *k'(s)
than to plain *k(s). I am just pointing out the possibilities... This is not
a very good argument against *k'.

Mate