From: Arnaud Fournet
Message: 61445
Date: 2008-11-06
----- Original Message -----
From: "etherman23" <etherman23@...>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud@...>
> wrote:
>>
>> This is "proof by absentia"
>> Maybe we just lack a clear example of H + CW.
>
> That's possible, but IMO not probable. It's not just that H+CW is
> rare, but the otherwise rare velars are suddenly much more common
> after laryngeals. Not only are they rare, but they're restricted in
> their language distribution. They always occur in Greek, yet never
> occur in Hittite, Tocharian, Italic, or Celtic.
=========
What is "they" ?
Could you be a little bit more explicit ?
I cannot see what you say and what you want to prove.
A.
=========
> I think the simplest
> explanation is that they are borrowing into the language after
> Hittite, Tocharian, and Italo-Celtic separated from the rest of IE
========
Simplest !?
Isn't this the shortest way from an obscure premice to a wrong conclusion ?
Arnaud
==========
> (I'm ignoring Albanian, which also has no cognates, because it's so
> poorly represented and understood that I don't think it contributes
> anything to the discussion). In the case of *sleh2gW we are probably
> dealing with coincidence rather than common borrowing (the phonetic
> correspondences are weak). Laryngeals most likely delabialized
> following labiovelars, much like *s did.
========
what about *skw- ? *skwalos and all English words like squ- ?
Personally, I'm not surprised that a complex row of _Three_ consonants such
as H + K +w is rare, root-finally.
This requires the basic naked root to be suffixed at least two times, maybe
three if H is not part of that basic root.
I cannot see what kind of conclusion we can make out of some obvious feature
conditioned by probabilities.
It's the expected result that the more suffixed, the less frequent, so what
?
The reverse situation would be much more intriguing and would require
explanations.
A.
=========
>
> I support the existence of PIE *a so I think it's quite possible that
> many examples of *eh2 could really go back to *aH. However all
> laryngeals appear to delabialize following labiovelars so the actual
> reconstruction of the vowel doesn't appear to matter in this
> discussion. Of course I still need to look into what happens when a
> laryngeal follows a consonant. Since there are examples of *a
> (possibly a vocalized laryngeal) preceding labiovelars the
> delabialization presumably would only occur when the laryngeal is a
> consonant. This opens things up for the paradigmatic alternation of
> *kW with *K due to the ablaut of *eH with *H. Indeed, this might even
> explain some of the counterexamples since analogy might restore the
> labiovelar.
>
===========
Wow !!
To be documented !
Arnaud