From: Andrew Jarrette
Message: 63568
Date: 2009-03-05
>I forgot to mention that Torsten reiterated his theory about PIE *k^ being merely the allophone of a *k before front vowels, and of PIE *ke being the allophone of PIE *kW before *e (/kW/ remaining e.g. in the combination *kWo).
> Torsten and I have been carrying on a discussion privately (it was private because it arose from comment on those same Dutch girls that caused so much commotion earlier) about the nature of Common Slavic *v/w. Torsten is of the opinion that it was everywhere /w/ because its treatment in some Slavic languages is so similar to that of *w in Danish which is known to have been /w/ everywhere (e.g. in Belarusian, dialects of Ukrainian and Slovenian, some West Slavic dialects). I was of the opinion that it was the labiodental approximant (X-SAMPA /P/), with labiovelar approximant allophones possible or later developed in preconsonantal and final position. One reason I cited for this was the observation that while PIE /w/ was never lost, the [w]-element in PIE *kW, *gW, *gWH was entirely lost in Common Slavic. This suggested to me that any [w], including the [w]-element of labiovelar plosives, must have changed in pronunciation in Common Slavic, perhaps lost entirely after velars but shifted to labiodental elsewhere (although I don't know the reason for this differential treatment). I wondered why /kv/ and /gv/ (or /Hv/) occurred at all in modern Slavic, which Torsten explained as due to loanwords (but I know that in Polish *k^w and *g^w/g^hw became /kv/, /gv/ at least before back vowels). Anybody want to weigh in on this or have any comments or insight?
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