Patrick Ryan wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <mkapovic@...>
> To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 4:33 AM
> Subject: Re: [tied] *kW- "?"
>>> and the implausibility of a contrast of *t-d-dH
>>> without **tH, you get a very baaaaad theory.
>
> <snip>
>
> ***
> Patrick:
>
> I can show that the original reconstruction of IE was correct because:
>
> 1) there are Egyptian reflexes which differentiate between
> correspondences with PIE *t and *th.
>
> a) Egyptian has ' and D for PIE *dh/*th as opposed to *d and *t for
> PIE *d/*t.
>
> Thus, the stop series is properly reconstructed *d, *dh, *t, *th (in
> all modes: labial, coronal, and dorsal); and the typological problems
> evaporate,
Quandrangular systems are much less popular than triangular, so the
typological problems remain. And especially, t - th - d - dh _is_ rare (is
there another one, apart from Indic?). And the system t. - th - t: - d is
also little spread (some Caucassian lgs; t. = abruptive = ejective).
Triangulars systems of t - d - dh are rare hovever possible (Kelabit).
Nostratic material, and especially Uralic reconstruction, gives support for
_a_ triangular system in IDE.
And if you want to talk about Egyptian... do you think that the Afro-Asiatic
family is a myth? If it is not, you should not compare e.g. Egyptian with
English but Indo-European with Afro-Asiatic.
As for me, the abundant lexical material on EHL (
http://ehl.santafe.edu/),
collected from many languages and with observing the genetic tree of
languages, is much more convincing than your trial, a little chaotic. Btw.
according to the EHL material, Egyptian and other AA languages are much
farther from IE than it was thought in Illich-Svitych's times and
Afro-Asiatic seems to be a sister rather than daughter group towards to
Nostratic. The same springs from other serious approaches like from that of
Kortland's (see his printed publications, some of them can easily be found
with Google, e.g.
http://www.kortlandt.nl/publications/art203e.pdf or
https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/retrieve/2584/344_079.pdf ): IE languages
are not closely related to AA but to Uralic rather. And even analyses of AA
languages themselves (not Egyptian but Afro-Asiatic as a whole) also lead to
a triangular system (t. - t - d) which can easily be compared with the
Indo-European one.
Of course you are right: the t - th - d - dh system was in use in some IE
dialects, not only in IIr, but also in Armenian (clear traces of *ph and
*kh), Greek (where *ph mixed with *bh etc.) and even Slavic (*kh > x). But
it seems to be obvious that all instances of *th are just from *t +
laryngeal.
Anyway, it would be interesting to compare your data with those from EHL and
from other sources. I wonder what examples of IE aspirated voiceless would
one manage to find.
Perhaps the classic model t - d - dh should be little modified, indeed. I am
against the glottal hypothesis in its original shape (the Armenian and
Germanic consonantisms are closest to the original PIE one - it does not
sound too probable) but there really seems to be some evidence for glottal
character of voiced from many IE branches. Perhaps t: - d? - dh (Korean-type
fortis - lenis glottalized - lenis aspirated) would be a better model for a
certain stage (cf. this with Uralic tt - t - d system). Such a model is
closer to Kortlandt (t: - t? - th) than to G&I (th - t? - d), and still
close to the classic approach ("dh" aspirated but not "t"). In such or
another way, I cannot see a place for the fourth element of the system
(before combinatory changes like tH > th).
Grzegorz J.
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