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.