Re: [tied] Tyrhennian affiliation

From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 33106
Date: 2004-06-06

On Sat, 05 Jun 2004 16:17:49 -0700 (PDT),
enlil@... wrote:

>I've been constantly working and reworking my theories on sound
>correspondances between IE and Tyrrhenian and have come up with some
>latest conclusions. The IndoTyrrhenian, like IE, had a three-way
>contrast of stops. Either something to the effect of *t (lax voiceless),
>*t: (tense voiceless/half-voiced), *d (voiced)

Why insist on using "lax" and "tense" in a meaning which is
incompatible with what the words really mean in phonology?
If we have a set of phonemes A which are voiceless and a set
B which are voiceless/half-voiced/voiced, then the
qualification "fortis/tense" *must* apply to A, while the
qualification "lenis/lax" *must* apply to B.

>or perhaps *t (voiceless),
>*t? (ejective) and *d (voiced). It's clear to me now that the Tyrrhenians
>had deflated this system into a simpler 2-way contrast of aspiration,
>doing away with any voicing contrast. Further, *p and *b (which become
>*p and *bH in IE) evolved differently from the other stops, becoming
>*f and *p respectively due to a pre-stop-shift change of *p>*f. It
>evolved in such a way that the aspirated series of *[tH, kH] (**pH
>didn't exist) was 'marked' and thus less frequent than the plain series
>of *[p, *t, *k]. So, I now contradict some of my earlier ideas by
>asserting that both the 'plain' and 'tense' (or ejective?) stops merged
>to the more common inaspirate series while *b, *d and *g (which became
>*bH, *dH and *gH in IE) became *p, *tH, and *kH respectively. This
>explains some unignorable correspondances like /-pi/ 'beside' (IE *bHi
>'by') and /-tHi/ 'in, at' (*dHi 'in, at').

Aren't you ignoring the fact that within the historically
attested Etruscan texts there's a tendency for inaspirate
sounds in the early inscriptions to become aspirates in the
later inscriptions? I think this applies to the locative
ending -t(h)i.

>The development of the velar series is further complicated but easy to
>understand. Delabialization of *kW, *k:W and *gW to their respective
>non-labialized counterparts is clear. So *kW merges with *k and both
>become Tyrrhenian *k (hence Etruscan /cara/ <=> IE *kWer-). However,
>in IndoTyrrhenian all velar stops were automatically pronounced as
>uvular when they neighboured *a -- This is merely an assimilation by
>vocalic quality of [+low] which *a has and which uvulars also are
>known to have. One might say that uvulars are a-coloured phonemes just
>as palatalized phonemes are i-coloured or labialized ones are u-coloured.
>Well, these allophones were eventually phonemecized (no longer just
>'automatic' but seperate phonemes) in both IE and Tyrrhenian. IE retained
>traces of the previous allophony with *k (former 'palatal' *k^) and
>uvular *q (former 'plain' *k). In Tyrrhenian, the uvular allophone
>merged with aspirate *x (normally correlating with IE *x/h2 and *hW/h3)
>which later oscillated in a predictable fashion between /cH(v)/ and /v/
>as we see in the collective (cf. pulumcHva, susleva, etc). It becomes
>/cH/ when preceded by consonant but /v/ when intervocalic.

That is not quite what is observed in the definite
declension (see: H. Eichner "Etruskisch -s'vla auf der
Bronze von Cortona" in: the Linguist's Linguist, 2002, or
Ignasi-Xavier Adiego, "Observaciones sobre el plural en
etrusco"
http://www.ub.es/ipoa/Observaciones%20sobre%20el%20plural%20en%20etrusco%20.pdf).

After -s', the collective/plural appears as -v- in the
paradigm:

sg.
nom. -(i)s'a
gen. -(i)s'la
pert. -(i)s'le
pl.
nom. -(i)s'va
gen. -(i)s'vla
pert. -(i)s'vle


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...