gLeN (me):
>Another idea I had was that *r, *n and *l were dental
Miguel:
> Dental /r/ would be highly unusual.
Really? Speaking of Semitic:
http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/LingWWW/LIN325/Notes04/Consonants.pdf
Check out its dental /r/. Might wanna double-check Russian
and Bengali as well. I don't know what you have in mind exactly,
but dental flaps or trills aren't terribly rare.
So in *pxte:r for example, the *r would be tapped behind the
teeth with the apex of the tongue. If a following *s was alveolar
however, *r would produce interference, making *s sound like
[S]. As a result, a previous form *pxte:rs should be pronounced
with an Icelandic accent. Ask yourself: How would Björk say it? :)
Whoa, wait a minute! That pdf above solves something for me!
I notice that *s is marked "alveolar" and *r, *l and *n are
"dental", exactly as I suspected in IE based on the nominative
disappearance puzzle. I guess that _is_ okay cuz I was
wondering whether alveolar /s/'s are possible in a language
with dental everything-else. In French, everything is dental,
including /s/.
Funny, I think I'll add that to my growing case for Indo-Semitic
areal influence.
= gLeN