aquila_grande wrote:
> I think more than 3 laeyngeals seem probable because this fits well
> into the phonological system of early IE. To make the system
> complete, there should be one unvoised and one voised spirant for
> each articulatory place.
>
> You have the following stops: p,ph,bh - t,th,dh - k,kh,gh -kW,kWh,k
>
> In a language with these stop series, the following spirants seem
> very probable f,v - s,z - x,Y - xw,Yw (y denoting velar voised sp.)
As Willem has already pointed out, actual sound systems are quite often
skewed or incomplete. Phonological symmetry is just a tendency resulting
from the fact that a more symmetrical system can be more economically
encoded using combinations of abstract features, but various other
factors may interfere with this tendency and override it. Let's suppose
that we have a [+/- voice] contrast in the stop system. We would expect
the same contrast to be utilised for fricatives, since the number of
phonemes (and, consequently, the contrastive potential of the language)
would be increased at no extra expense. But such an extension doesn't
happen automatically and many languages seem to be doing well without
some phonemes they "should" have. For example, Spanish has the voiceless
fricative /c^/, but it has no /3^/ (the expected voiced counterpart) or
/s^/ (the expected fricative counterpart). All but one Polish obstruent
phonemes (stops, fricatives and affricates) can be neatly arranged into
voiceless/voiced pairs, but velar /x/ remains as the odd fellow out. The
vocal tract, for one thing, is not a symmetrical structure, so some
fricatives may be rarer than others, and some contrasts may be typically
limited to certain ranges of articulation.
> In addition the h is a very probable phoneme for languages having
> aspirated stops, and the glottal stop ? complete the picture by
> being the clusile counterpart of h.
>
> f,v did not existe. z may have been there, but fallen together with
> s.
>
> Then we have left these 6 probable spirants and one stop that should
> have been there: x,Y,xw,Yw,h,?
>
> That is: You have 6 probable sounds that could be the laryngeals
> treated in the theory.
>
> Tu asume at leat 4 laryngeal existed, is therefor not to overstretch
> the theory, if this can explain historical facts.
Unless the facts can be explained with recourse to a smaller number, in
which case you'd better forget about "the theory". I have myself
experimented with just two laryngeals and had to give up. On the other
hand, there seems to be little use for a fourth laryngeal in explaining
the evidence (pace Kurylowicz's interpretation of the Hittite data, and
the system adopted in the EIEC). If there's anything resembling a
majority consensus today, it's the assumption of three laryngeals in
PIE. Note that we shouldn't insist on aligning them with any other triad
in the PIE sound system, in particular, with the three dorsal
articulations (*K^, *K and *KW) -- that would be another manifestation
of the Jakobsonian Fallacy. The reconstruction of the phonetic features
of the laryngeals is an autonomous problem and must, first and foremost,
respect the comparative/historical evidence.
PIotr