Re: A loose thought on present n-infix, ablaut

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

> Some have proposed that PIE *bh, *b, p etc were actually *b *'b, *p
> etc, so that the voiced unaspirated stops were really
> preglottalized. Pulleyblank (Historical and Prehistorical
> Relationships of Chinese, in Wang(ed.) The Ancestry of the Chinese
> Language) proposes instead that they were nasal, thus: *n,W > *gW,
> *n, > *g, n,Y > *g´ etc, which would fit his idea that Chinese and
> IE are related in the case of Old Chinese *n,W`&G = PIE *gWow- (and
> mine that it's a loan into early PIE).

> Nasal or pre-nasalised?

> The exception to the rule
> would be that *m > *b did not happen (and *n > *d requires us to
> find other sources for PIE *n, but aren't a lot of the roots with *n-
> suspiciously "international", *nu, *nom- etc?), which would explain
> the lack of *b's in PIE.

The gap tendencies are also right for prenasalised consonants. The
missing consonant in a prenasalised series tends to be the labial one,
which matches the dearth of PIE *b. Contrariwise, it is the back
consonants that go missing for preglottalised consonants.

Richard.