--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "david_russell_watson"
<liberty@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "elmeras2000" <jer@...> wrote:
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-
> > language@...> wrote:
> > >
> > > I believe that voiceless aspirated
> > > plosives must be reconstructed for PIE: *ph, *th, and *kh.
> >
> > I know they must, the evidence is there.
>
> Do you mean, Jens, that there were voiceless aspirates
> as _allophones_ of the voiceless stops or of the voiced
> aspirates?
There was a change from *-H1t- and *-H2t- to *-th-, detectable at
morpheme borders in some very old lexicalized derivatives. It takes
a *very* sophisticated phonological analysis to call *-th- an
allophone of anything here, but tastes differ. If the laryngeal of
the first part was later restored, the results could be *-H1-th-, *-
H2-th-, but also *-H1t-, *-H2t- with restoration of the suffix-
initial unaspirated /t/. By this time, which is still pre-PIE,
the /th/ was certainly phonemic. There are also cases of apparently
plain -t- from these sources, caused by replacement of the regular
product *-th- by the productive suffix form *-t-. It has taken quite
some effort to get at the roots of this. Practically all the work
has been made by Birgit Olsen to whom I have the honour to be
married. She had added some cases of asspirated *-kh- of comparable
brackground, but the th-examples are the ones that really spell
regularity. The idea of *-H-d- > *-dh- is still on the drawing board.
Jens