Re: Reasons (was [tied] Re: Some thoughts...)

--- Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Sean Whalen
> <stlatos@...> wrote:
>
> > I posited a more symmetrical phonology to see if
> the
> > extra phones would provide any explanatory
> advantages,
> > and each did.
>
> Little wonder. If you increase the number of terms
> to be manipulated,
> you increase the explanatory power of the model by
> allowing your
> creative imagination more elbow-space, but there is
> a price to pay:
> the model becomes less constrained and you expose
> yourself to
> Ockham's razor.

I've only increased the number of consonants by 5
(if you count b) and put the laryngeals within the
structure instead of deciding their nature by fiat.
Also, vowels reduced by two and all short. I don't
think h1 was always non-coloring, either (yi-yoh1-h2e
with o>e (Greek he:ka), dhi-dhoh1-h2e (Latin fe:ci:)).

> > Sr-/str- is
> > explained by sr>str and f>s, ...
>
> This, again, looks to me more like arbitrary
> re-encoding (rather than
> explaining anything). Why should one need such a
> rule? What's wrong
> with *str- being just *str-?

Nothing's wrong with it, but it seems it wasn't so.

> In the languages that
> have changed
> initial /sr/ into /str/ (Germanic, Slavic) the same
> change took place
> word-medially. You certainly can't posit that for
> PIE, and you don't
> explain why the t-epenthesis should have been
> restricted to initial
> positions.

Many languages lack sr- or str-. If a language
allows s to be placed before a C in the onset less
sonorant than it the language may have both (though
perhaps only str-, as in English). Since for other
reasons I added f, there's no reason not to think that
fr- existed. Since f>s, putting it after sr->str- can
explain a more complex phonotactic situation with an
older simpler one.

Intervocalically VsrV could easily be Vs-rV.



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com