Re: Renfrew's theory renamed as Vasco-Caucasian

> Almost every language on Earth may boast of a rarity or two. French
> has a rounded palatal glide, Czech a trilled fricative, German a
> labial affricate, etc.Complex/contour segments seldom contrast with
> bisegmental clusters of the same phonetic makeup, but seldom doesn't
> mean never. Standard Polish has a contrast between /c^/
> (postalveolar affricate) and /ts^/ (the corresponding cluster), as
> in <czysta> 'pure, clean (f.)' vs. <trzysta> '300', and in some
> accents (including mine) there's a clear distinction between
> palatalised consonants like /m'/ and clusters like /mj/. I have it
> in <ziemia> 'earth' vs. <chemia> 'chemistry'.
>
> IE correspondence sets leave no doubt about the *k^w : *kW contrast
> (*kw is rarer but also supported by a few equations). All the satem
> groups differentiate them consistently:
>
> *k^w > Skt. s'v, Av. sp, Arm. s^, Lith. s^v, OCS sv, Alb. s
> *kW > Skt., Av., Lith., OCS, Alb. k, Arm. kH (unless palatalised)

In the case of ziemia/chemia one is a loanword and owes its /mj/ to
that fact. Besides the words for "horse" and "dog", which could be
loans, which PIE words have /k^w/?


Torsten