--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "C. Darwin Goranson"
<cdog_squirrel@...> wrote:
> And to bring up annother nagging question: why is there no "f"
> nor "v" in PIE?
The absence of a contrast between [v] and [w] is quite common.
Well-known non-PIE examples in languages with well-established voicing
contrasts include Japanese and Arabic.
The commonest number of fricatives (other than /h/) in a language is
two. PIE had at least three - /s/, /h2/ (probably [x]) and /h3/
([xW]?). There are hints of others - **z and **sW.
Langauges can do quite well without /f/ - Shan merged Proto-SW Tai *f
with *pH (as /pH/) (and *v with *b and *p as /p/), and Balto-Slavonic
did without until Christianisation. The Spanish (Castilian) loss of
/f/ except before /u/ and /r/ is well known, and Spanish even now has
/x/, /รพ/ and /s/. (If partial loss like this is acceptable, there's
also Japanese [f] > [h] except before /u/.)
Richard.