--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fournet.arnaud" <fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:
> Thank you for listing examples.
> This always takes time
> and everybody must be grateful for this.
> Nevertheless,
> there is little doubt about the fact
> that voiceless aspirates are not a feature of PIE,
> as noticed as early as Saussure's works on Laryngeals.
> Voiceless aspirates are in most cases
> phonotactic results of C + H.
> They are few because this phonotaxis was rare.
> Arnaud
I'll grant that this occurs in Indo-Iranian for H2 and H1 (though I
know at least one person who disputes the notion that H1 causes
aspiration). This means that we can't rely on just the I-Ir data. A
much better case can be had when I-Ir and Greek both have voiceless
aspirates. Armenian isn't quite as helpful as Greek because it doesn't
preserve separate reflexes for *t and *tH. Also the combination of
s+voiceless stop apparently became voiceless aspirate. Greek,
unfortunately appears to lose the feature of aspiration if the
voiceless aspirate is the first member of a consonant cluster (this
does not hold for the traditional voiced aspirates).