Peter:
> Perhaps the stubborn tradition persists because some
> of us are unconvinced.
Bring it on! :)
> Since the reflexes of traditional *k^ are palatals,
> there must have been palatalisation at some stage.
Yes, only within the _post-IE_ satem dialect area.
Outside the area, plain *k (trad. *k^) remained as it
was. If you think of the satem group as an emerging
wave within the larger spread of IE, then it all makes
clear sense.
Inside that area when it was still young and small,
which included the budding dialects of IndoIranian,
Armenian and Albanian, *k was fronted straight to
*c^. Then, as the satem area expanded new
emerging waves within "satem" did their own things.
As we know, IndoIranian for example further
delabialized *kW to plain *k and also fronted uvular
*q to plain *k but Armenian did something slightly
different if I understood correctly, but all share
the initial change of *k > *c^.
This 'unmotivated' palatalization of /k/ shouldn't be
shocking. Some dialects of English do this whereby
"car" is pronounced with palatalization of "c"
before "a". Notice also the variation of the word
"Tuesday" or "tune". Historically we know that it
is /t-/, not /tj-/. Spontaneous palatalization
strikes again, bwahahaha!
The account I raccount does not contradict what we
see in IE either and the biggest bonus: This DOESN'T
violate simple markedness issues anymore.
Peter, you just can't get around markedness. The
frequency of instances of what you purport to
be "palatal *k^" is far too numerous in the
commonmost morphemes of IE to be credible. You
haven't addressed this most basic point. The
traditional theory for that reason alone is horribly
wrong and I've already shown the example of *sweks
(traditional *swek^s) which we can be sure is a
Semitic loan, completely lacking palatalization in
Proto-Semitic *s^idTu-.
It's time to bury tradition.
> Besides, the PIE symbols can be taken as arbitrary
> and algebraic: [...]
Yes, they can when you first start reconstructing
a language but we know far too much nowdays about
IE to continue this. It's very safe to say, based on
the modernday arguements that traditional *k^ is
plain ol' *k and the diacritic is simply making this
confusing and cumbersome for many people.
In fact, we wouldn't be continuing to have these
conversations if we just made the switch. It's hard
at first for people to wrap their head around a
different orthography for the IE sound system and
to convert each *k^ to */k/ and each *k to */q/ in
their minds.
Still, it has to be done because we've come a long
way since Pokorny. As Patrick mentioned, we need
another Pokorny to take time away from her/his busy
schedule to amass an up-to-date listing. Volunteers?
:)
= gLeN
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