Re: [tied] Absence of Labiodentals in PIE (was: Ex Libris; the book

From: David Webb
Message: 38178
Date: 2005-05-30

Maybe they had no lips or teeth?

 

-----Original Message-----
From: cybalist@yahoogroups.com [mailto:cybalist@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Richard Wordingham
Sent: 30 May 2005 19:22
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [tied] Absence of Labiodentals in PIE (was: Ex Libris; the book is for)

 

--- 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.