--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
> If we have a system without voiced stops (such
> as *t = /t:/, *d =/t'/, *dh = /th/), it may be unlikely that there
would
> have been voiced fricatives (not sure if that's a universal);
Danish and Greenlandic (which are of course not related) both lack
voiced stops, but do have voiced fricatives.
In my opinion the insight into PIE phonetics is now way past the
point where absence of voiced stops ceased to be a serious option.
If there was a stage with voiceless glottalics it was one of an
infinite number of prestages of the protolanguage. The jigsaw
problem is then no longer "Where does this piece fit into the
picture I see?", but rather "Where does this piece fit into any
appropriate picture, including many I do not see?". That strongly
reduces the usefulness of the query.
Jens