Re: [tied] Unreality...

----- Original Message -----
From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2004 1:49 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Unreality...


> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
> To: "Mate Kapovic" <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2004 2:50 AM
> Subject: Re[2]: [tied] Re: Unreality of One-Vowel Systems (was: Bader's
> article on *-os(y)o)
>
> > > I am definitely with Jens here... Monovocalic theory
> > > cannot be excluded on typological grounds since some
> > > languages *can* (even if it is only a possibility) be
> > > analyzed like that and also there is the standard example
> > > - if all the Khoisan languages died out before linguists
> > > came there, I bet 99% of all linguists would swear that
> > > phonemic clics are absolutely impossibile.
> >
> > Damin?
>
> And the whole Nguni branch of Bantu (including Zulu and Xhosa) would have
to
> disappear as well (not to mention Hadza and Sandawe, whose relatedness to
> any part of "Khoisan" is problematic). While it's true that the Nguni
> languages have acquired clicks as a result of areal diffusion, they did so
> well before any linguists came to South Africa.

You're all hairsplitting... I should have written if there was no Khoisan
group (including Hadza and Sandawe), and the Nguni branch of Bantu and Damin
linguists would think that clics are impossibile. That is not the point. The
point is that clics, save for Damin, a secret language in Australia, are not
attested anywhere else than in the south of Africa. It *is* possibile to
imagine that all these language died out before we got to them. And if it
were so, nobody would except a reconstructed language with clics because
there is no such language.

Mate