From: tgpedersen
Message: 58837
Date: 2008-05-25
>D) There were originally velars, which had allophones c^e/ko etc, and
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Andrew Jarrette" <anjarrette@>
> wrote:
> >
> > (snip)
> > Also, according to this theory, which
> > are more original, centum or satem; if the centum velars are the
> > more original sounds, why did all languages nearest to the
> > urheimat (excluding Tocharian) participate in a shift velar >
> > palatal; if the satem palatals are more original, why did all the
> > most western languages participate in a shift palatal > velar,
> > which I personally find rather implausible? Isn't it easier to
> > suggest that the velars are the more original, and in like fashion
> > the original homeland was (much) nearer than India to those
> > languages that had the velars rather than the palatals?
> >
> > Andrew
> >
>
> I don't think there's any automatic positive correlation between
> linguistic conservatism and geographic continuity. In fact, some
> linguists have suggested that the opposite occurs, based on dialect
> distribution of colonial languages (and maybe some other things).
>
> NOTE: I see that I haven't actually said much that's relevent below,
> but since I took a lot of trouble to write it, I'm leaving it in.
>
> As for PIE dorsals, there are 3 views that I can recall.
>
> (A) the traditional view, with 3 types: palatal, velar, and
> labiovelar. Here, the satem languages merge the labiovelars with the
> velars (no big problem), but the centum languages, which are
> historically discontiguous in a big way, must merge the palatals
> with the velars, which to me suggests a substrate (e.g. it's been
> proposed that the lack of dorsal palatalization in Sardinian before
> front vowels is due to a possibly Afroasiatic substrate).
>
> (B) a modified view (previously discussed on CyBaLiSt) also with 3
> types: velar, uvular, and labiovelar. The centum languages only have
> to merge the uvulars with the velars. This also has the advantage of
> making the less common set of phonemes correspond with the
> more "marked" set of sounds.
>
> (C) In this view, there were originally only velars and labiovelars.
> Then the satem languages underwent an originally conditioned
> palatalization which was obscured by analogy.
>
> I don't think (A) is very tenable, regardless of the homeland's
> location, but it would cause problems for the Indian homeland
> hypothesis, in that the centum languages would have to all leave in
> a single group, while Germanic has much in common with Balto-Slavic
> and Greek with Indo_Iranian.
>
> For (B) and (C), I don't see anything relevent to the question,
> although I'll mention that I don't see the earmarks of
> unidirectional expansion either.