Re[2]: [tied] Pronunciation of "r" - again?

At 9:03:52 PM on Wednesday, October 12, 2005, Patrick Ryan
wrote:

> From: "david_russell_watson" <liberty@...>

>> [...] I was quoting a claim of Patrick's from earlier in
>> the thread, one which I personally give no credence, and
>> which is what prompted me to enter the thread in the
>> first place. :^)

[...]

> Laryngeal theorists usually assume three different
> "laryngeals", which they call *H1, *H2, *H3, and then
> squabble over what they were phonetically.

> What PIE-derived language has three "laryngeals"?

> Two "laryngeals"? Germanic if you count the glottal stop
> and /h/, even though it is not a _retention_ from PIE.
> Hittite, if you assume initial vowels are really /?V/.

> One "laryngeal"? Ah, some IE languages have a glottal
> stop. Close enough.

> Arabic has four "laryngeals", /?, h, ¿, H/.

> I make the claim again: Arabic has _retained_ "laryngeals"
> (really laryngals and pharyngals) better (more) than any
> PIE-derived language.

> You still think this is wrong? [...]

It's irrelevant. The claim to which David was objecting was
this: 'The language that has best retained the Nostratic
sound-system is Arabic' (Nr. 41092). Specifically, he's
objecting to the implicit claim that there is an accepted
Nostratic super-family with an accepted sound-system. Since
in fact there isn't, he's right to object.

Brian