--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@...>
wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "david_russell_watson"
<liberty@...> wrote:
>
> the far greater number derive from a phoneme that was
> probably realized as [x]/[ç].
>
> Yes, it is rare. I resisted the correspondence when I
> first saw the comparative data pattern.
What correspondence? The various outcomes in the Indo-
European dialects of the sounds in question all lead to
the conclusion that they were _stops_, with only their
exact locations of articulation and types of phonation
ever being in any question.
> After trying every other alternative, I was forced to
> accept.
But nothing forces us to accept that. On the contrary
the majority of their earliest attested reflexes are
stops and affricates, with the affricates being easily
derivable from stops, and the fricative reflexes being
easily derived from the affricates.
> A back velar would have made much more sense.
>
> During the Pontic period of glides and neutral *a,
What's the "Pontic period of glides and neutral *a"? No
such stage is reconstructed for P.I.E.
> *kWa would have been the outcome of an earlier *ko. Perhaps,
> this sequence was phonemicized and generalized. When glides
> went the way of the wind, *kW and *gW were available for new
> employment.
When did glides go the way of the wind? Both *w and *j
are reconstructed for P.I.E., with reflexes of both of
them surviving as glides in some of the dialects.
More importantly, though, you give 'k' and 'g' for this
supposed earlier stage of P.I.E., not the 'x' for which
you're supposedly arguing.
> Why?
>
> Because the earliest PIE speakers seem to have been voiceless
> spirant-shy: no *f, no *x/ç.
If your claim is that the velars of late P.I.E. ascend
to fricatives in the earliest P.I.E., then how does it
help your case to claim that the very speakers of that
earliest P.I.E. were "spirant-shy"?
Moreover it doesn't really appear they had any problem
pronouncing voiceless fricatives. The main allophone
of P.I.E. *s is supposed to have been one, and some of
the laryngeals are well supposed to have been too. See
section 14.5. "Evidence for fricative articulation" and
section 14.7. "Evidence for voice" of Lehmann's 'Proto-
Indo-European Phonology', available online at
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/books/piep14.html#txu-
oclc-3953445.xml-div-d0e19661 .
> You will mention Hittite <h> as [x]; its employment for all
> notated 'laryngeals' suggests strongly Hittite <h> was [h]
> not [x].
Even if the Hittite sound were truly [h], Hittite isn't
P.I.E. and [h] could easily derive from an earlier velar
fricative. Though, again, what does it lend to a case
for earliest P.I.E. having velar fricatives to deny them
for later P.I.E.?
> I wondered about that, too. The better notation would have
> been *k(^)WH.
No, that's still impossible. There can be no 'k^W'. In
the standard system of notation '^' and 'W' represent
mutually exclusive modifications of a velar: palatality
and labiality respectively.
Maybe you can explain what you intend with this notation
in phonetic terms.
-----------------------------------------------------------
So as best as I can guess, you're saying that, between one
early stage of P.I.E. and the next, its speakers lost the
ability to pronounce voiceless fricatives, and that thus is
explained the strange change of fricatives to stops that
you claim took place.
You can't prove that such a radical change in pronunciation
ever took place, however, and haven't, and what's missing
as well is the reason we should believe they were fricatives
in the first place.
> > That's correct. Please do provide examples to back your
> > claims here, and clarify what was intended with your non-
> > standard notations.
>
> I believe I have done that above.
With 'examples' I was actually requesting correspondences,
meaning lists of cognate pairs to prove that 'k(^)W', in
whatever sense you're using it, or any other of your other
reconstructions, is superior to the standard reconstruction
already widely accepted. I suppose you do understand that
P.I.E. as reconstructed by yourself is quite different from
that of Beekes, Lehmann, P. Gasiorowski, M. C. Vidal, etc.,
and even that of Pokorny, do you not?
The idea that the P.I.E. velar stops derived from earlier
fricatives can't be made on the basis of cognates, however,
since P.I.E. has no known relatives to provide those. It's
a matter entirely of internal reconstruction, and I don't
believe anybody's been led to posit pre-P.I.E. fricatives
as the source of P.I.E. velar stops on that basis either.
David