--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:
> [Jens:]
> > I find it hard to regard word-final voicing a preferred solution,
> > but who am I to tell?
> [Glen:]
> Alright, so I do an internet search on this apparent restriction
> and yes I guess linguists do find final voicing rare... but not
> non-existent (and one might wonder whether the assertion is only
> substantiated by 'lack of evidence', by dismissing the potential
> data from languages which _do_ have it, like Lezghian).
>
> This article is very significant for this debate on IE:
>
> http://home.uchicago.edu/~aclyu/papers/Language80.pdf
I have seen it now, and indeed it looks like a case of voicing
induced on final consonants by a following word boundary. In so far
it is comparable to your idea of Indo-European, but that idea seems
to be deficient. IE goes further than the facts of Lezghian quoted
in the article. All cited Lezghian words have a voiced segment
preceding the final consonant, so that it only demonstrates that a
preceding voiced segment can impart voicing on a word-final
consonant. That is admittedly more than I expected to see, but still
less than what is assumed for IE in case the nominative marker is
posited as [-z] where it lengthens. The process could salvage a
nominative *-os from [-oz], but is would also demand a 2sg *-os
which is not what we have. And if *wó:kW-s is to be from something
ending in *-kW-z, it just is not parallel at all. So it isn't all
that smooth. Nor, of course, is there anything independent to
suggest that IE should be parallel to precisely this language even
if it did conform to your dreams.
I am not sure you are reading the article as intended by the author,
but I can't go back and check without destroying this posting. I'll
come back if there is more.
Jens