Me to Peter:
> 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.
Mate:
> Not really. It can easily be explained by some
> process in pre-PIE [...]
STOP! Whoa, there! Do you understand why that
statement is irrational? It's because, in order to
repair what you can obviously see is a flaw in the
IE theory, you are now going to *add* another
tentative theory (namely, of pre-IE!!) to account for
it!
!!!! Multiplication of hypotheses! Very bad! Ugh :)
Mate, we both see that markedness issues make the
IE theory unstable. Let's not add theories to plug
up the hole. Let's rework the IE theory in such a
way that it doesn't have markedness issues. That's
what the theory of uvularity does. We simply shift
all instances of *k^ to *k and all instances of *k
to *q. There's nothing lost by this replacement in
regards to the traditional theory of IE. We're
simply using different symbols. That's it.
Don't be frightened.
> So? What's the point here? Nobody is claiming that
> palatovelars are ancient in IE.
What I'm saying is that they don't exist in IE
because of markedness issues, and loanwords that
evidently must have occured in *pre-IE* also testify
against palatalized velars in those stages. Ergo, the
whole traditional view has no basis in _any_ stage of
IE or pre-IE.
So let's pull the plug on your dying friend, the
'palatovelar'.
> Or not. I still don't get how do you explain Luwian
> with your theory?
In the same way as anything else. All we are doing is
changing the "symbol": *k^=>*k, *k=>*q. That's it.
All the previous explanations for Luwian or any
language you can think of in IE linguistics are
still in effect. It's just that we derive the attested
results from a plain *k (instead of palatal *k^) or a
uvular *q (instead of plain *k) instead.
So Indo-Iranian *c^ is simply from a fronted *k that
was originally IE plain *k. Indo-Iranian *k is from
the merger of IE *kW (as always) and a _de-uvularized_
IE *q. That's it. Everything still behaves normally
via good ol' fashioned linguistic processes, and
perhaps even better now that markedness is no longer
an issue.
= gLeN
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