----- Original Message -----From: etherman23Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 4:56 PMSubject: [tied] Voiceless Apirtaes (was Re: IE *p and *b)--- In cybalist@... s.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@ ...>
wrote:
>
> Well, perhaps not simpler?
>
> But two stops (t?, th) and two affricates (t?s, ths) is pretty simple.
>
> Perhaps you would care to give a few examples that I will try to
illustrate through my proposed system?
Let me reiterate that the voiceless aspirates seem few in number and
are often difficult to reconstruct. However, I don't have a better
explanation of the facts. I will only present a few to illustrate the
point. All examples are from the Tower of Babel database of PIE.
PIE *k^opH/k^apH- -hoof
Sanskrit s'apha
Avestan safa
Slavic kopyto (y is a high central vowel)
Baltic kana:^pa:
Germanic xo:fa
This one might be explicable with a laryngeal. Too bad we don't have a
Greek reflex. I'm guessing that the ^ in Baltic is a tone mark.
PIE k^ipH--twig
Sanskrit s'ipha:
Baltic cipulia, cipsna:^
Latin cippus
It's not clear to me if a laryngeal explanation is tenable here. The
first Baltic form doesn't have any tone mark, but the second does.
That could be from the *-eH2 feminine ending.
<snip>***
My primary reason for postulating voiceless affricates is that they have different correspondents from plain voiceless stops in Sumerian and Egyptian: *th and *ths are d/t and D/' in Egyptian; d and t (also z) in Sumerian.
The glottalized dental stop and affricate have the same correspondents.
This can be helpful. If a Sumerian correspondent to PIE *bh is b, it is likely that PIE *bh is standing for earlier *b; as in *bhlew- - bulug^, 'grow'.
Patrick Ryan
***