Richard:
> Do not English <twelfths> and <sixths> contain absurd strings? And
> Jens has heard [ptkllI] in English.
As a native North American English speaker I've never heard such a thing
nor would I expect to since it completely violates known phonotactics of
our language. English doesn't have five consonant clusters like this.
Am I seeing that correctly, double "l"??
As for "twelfths" and "sixths", I happen to pronounce them [twElfs] and
[siks], the latter word being homophonous with "six". I just can't be
bothered tripping my tongue on a cluster like [lfTs] and I'm sure I'm
not the only one.
At any rate, English has rules even on what is allowable and what isn't
in a syllable. This is simply too well documented to have a such an empty
philosophical debate about and English is just like any language in this
respect. So we should expect any language including IE, any prestages of
IE, Uralic, EA and Altaic to all follow suit with this common sense. The
only reason I can think of as to why Jens would argue against phonotactic
constraints is if he wants to allow himself maximum freedom to reconstruct
just about anything he wishes. That's not good methodology. We have to
restrain our imagination immediately with rules otherwise it will get
carried away and our theory will become out of control.
= gLeN