Re: [tied] *kW- "?"

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, glen gordon <glengordon01@...> wrote:

> The traditional theory is INVALID by markedness, Mate,
> because, simply, a logical theory must be _OPTIMALLY_
> EFFICIENT. A theorist must weed out any non-
> necessities, otherwise the theory suffers. Period.

Actually it's quite easy to see why *k^ would be more common. If *e
palatalized velars and *e is the most common vowel it's perfectly
understandable that the velar series would violate markedness
constraints. But then we'd expect to see some kind of regularization,
which we do: the merger of unpalatalized velars and labiovelars.