Note on palatals

Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

On 2006-05-24 16:26, Mate Kapoviæ wrote:

> You're basically saying that it was still *k'... I don't see the point in
> talking about "non-distinctive affrication" etc.

I simply mean that practically all true palatal stops (I mean those in
which the point of contact is at the back of the hard palate, not just
slightly advanced velars) are affricated no matter if the speakers are
aware of the affrication or not; in most cases they aren't, and the
affrication has no phonological relevance. But it is important from the
_phonetic_ point of view, since it's dramatically increased by any
further fronting, and the passage from /k'/ to any coronal affricate is
both continuous and natural, hence its wide occurrence cross-linguistically.

I'd say that it's quite _unusual_ for palatal stops to remain
diachronically stable, and that they are far more frequently fronted
than retracted; hence my hunch that PIE *k^ was up to a certain point a
plain velar rather than a palatal. The languages in which it became a
palatal underwent parallel evolution towards full "satemisation", but
since its initial fronting was oddly unconstrained (back vowels didn't
prevent it), I think it's more likely to have happened just once rather
than several times independently (unaccountably, in languages forming a
geographical block).

There is more similarity in the development of Balto-Slavic and
Indo-Iranian (where we also have the early and complete merger of the *k
and *kW series and the RUKI rule), while the "satellite" languages,
Armenian and Albanian, show various idiosyncratic developments.

Piotr

-------------------------------

I'd just like to comment on this much-discussed issue in IE linguistics. Many linguists and scholars are of the opinion that the IE palatal series k^, g^, g^h was not originally palatal, but was rather velar, and became subsequently fronted in Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic, Armenian, and Albanian. The evidence is that in historical language developments, former velars always evolve to palatals or more front sounds, and not the other way around, and after all, Greek, Latin, Celtic, and Germanic all have only velar plosives where the other languages have more front consonants, suggesting that this centum branch preserved the original situation, while the satem branch innovated. I wonder whether it is not possible that the satem branch is actually more conservative.

The reason why I say this is because I have noticed that of all the many IE languages, both historical and modern, the only ones that have preserved the IE "voiced aspirate" series are Sanskrit and its modern descendants. All other IE languages have modified these original consonants. One looking at this distribution might wonder whether languages like Greek, Latin, or Germanic actually preserve the original situation, and Sanskrit has innovated. After all, the vast majority of IE languages have no voiced aspirates, and have changed them to other sounds, whether voiced unaspirated plosives, voiceless aspirates, or fricatives. Is it not possible, then, that the centum languages have also changed original palatals to the easier-to-pronounce velars, just as most IE languages have changed the voiced aspirates into easier-to-pronounce sounds? In this respect, again Sanskrit is the most conservative, preserving an original palatal stop (its j, as originally pronounced), and, while *k^ has become a palatal fricative, nevertheless the later-evolved Sanskrit c probably sounded much like IE *k^ would have sounded, at least in the original pronunciation of Sanskrit. The other satem languages changed these palatals into easier-to-pronounce alveolopalatals, alveolars, or dentals, while centum languages changed them to velars, just as some IE languages changed the voiced aspirates to voiced unaspirated plosives, while others changed them eventually to fricatives. The point is that though few languages exhibit actual palatals, and may have velars instead, nevertheless evidence would suggest that palatals did actually exist, just as evidence suggests that voiced aspirated consonants did actually exist (though preserved only in one branch of IE, and of course ignoring the theories of alternate articulations of the IE stops, such as the glottalic theory). I wonder whether correspondences of Balto-Slavic k or c^ with Greek/Italic k/c should really be discounted as evidence of former velar *k, separate from *k^, as many scholars do, especially more recent ones.

Just as a by-the-way observation, I have noticed that many Swedish speakers replace their velar /k/ (written k before a, o, u, etc.) with a palatal-sounding plosive, almost /kj/. So perhaps this provides evidence that the palatal series might have been originally velar, and underwent spontaneous palatalization, even in back environments. But many Swedish speakers also pronounce a former palatal or alveolopalatal sound, their sk before front vowels (as well as sj, stj) as a labialized velar fricative or something similar, something like /xW/. This, as well as the development of j in Spanish, suggests that a former palatal sound might become velar, instead of the other way around. Note also German words like Scherge from *scerjo and gären from *jesan, *jerien, for the change of palatal>velar.

Andrew

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