Me on the "uvular theory":
> Everything is still the same... but better.
Mate:
> Actually it's not. Because we reconstruct *q instead
> of *k when all the reflexes point to *k [...]
No, Mate. Markedness shows that all reflexes must
point to a _marked_ phoneme and that *k^ must be
"plain". Read up on markedness. It's standard
linguistics.
Now it is true that "marked" does not necessarily
imply "uvular". However, it remains the most likely
result. This is because uvulars are most likely to
colour *e to *a by assimilation of a particular
quality from the phoneme to the vowel: [+low]. Well,
uvulars naturally have that very quality! We may then
unite *q (trad. *k), *G (trad. *g) and *GH (trad.
*gH) with *h2 to form a more cohesive 'uvular'
class. It then can phonetically explain why there is
a near-absence of reconstructions with *qe or *eq. In
fact, it is more than likely that they are nothing
but post-IE mirages anyway.
and because we reconstruct *k
> instead of *k' when all
> the reflexes point to *k'.
> As I said, the uvular theory could be one of the
> pre-IE explanation of why *k' is more frequent than
> *k, but certainly not the only one.
Why should one be concerned with "other" theories
that are less efficient? That would be illogical.
= gLeN
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