Re: ka and k^a [was: [tied] *kW- "?"]

glen gordon wrote:

> Grzegorz:
>> The discussion here is about *ka, *k^a etc. in PIE.
>> But who said they were really present?
>
> Linguists.

Some linguists. And others said it was absent. Then the discussion should
start from evidence that these gropus were really present.

> I can't conceive of an attested vowel
> system without a low vowel /a/. Can you?

And I can.

There are systems with [ä] and [å] (or back [a^]) but without low [a]. PIE
[e], [o] can have low articulation as well.

> Ergo, *a
> is there without a doubt in IE, even if it's rare.

Is a without doubt in English or in Late Common Slavic? If yes, show it to
me please.

>> Please consult the Lubotsky's article "Against a
>> Proto-Indo-European phoneme *a", [...]
>
> He's right about these instances of *a, yes, but
> I think he might be going too far in some cases
> like *was-. I don't think it truly was **wHs- at
> the very last stage of IE. Vocalization of laryngeals
> in these positions would have occured early on.

Why? Notice that *H used to yield a vowel (E, call it "schwa" or what you
like) easily, anyway more easily than *r or *l. And wlC- yielded wl.C-, not
*ulC-, didn't it? So, why wHC- mightn't have yielded wEC-?

> It's also possible, especially if the vocalization
> of some of these laryngeals occured early that
> there would be a few common stems with an
> alternation of accented *eh2 and unaccented *a...
> So for example, nominative *neh2s "nose" but
> genitive *nasós "of the nose". Afterall, IE
> phonotactics tell us that there would be an initial
> syllable nasal in the genitive if it were *nh2sos
> and it would be expressed as **n.h2sos instead!

No, not n.H2sos, but nH2.sos > nasos. If there were two intial sounds of the
set {u i H m n r l} in the given word, the first was always a consonant
while the second - a vowel, hence *wl.-, not *ul-, *nE-, not *n.H-, *ju-,
not *iw- etc.

>
> So... *a is needed.
> = gLeN

If you think of *a < *H, then you may be right. But if you think of any
H-indepent a's ... hmmm, this may be the problem of so called "alpha" or
other reduced vowels (not schwa).

Grzegorz J.





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