Dear Danny and Nostraticists:
----- Original Message -----From: Danny WierSent: Monday, July 09, 2001 4:54 PMSubject: Re: [nostratic] Fw: BOMHARD'S Nostratic to IE Vowel Tables[DW]Come to think of it, after looking at the family-level reconstructions, I wonder why Bomhard has only three phonemic vowels. As you [Pat] said, Dravidian data seems to challenge that theory and call for a proposal of all six vowels being phonemic.[PCR]I am not so sure that is true.Bomhard actually has six vowels for Nostratic: [*e/*i, *a/*6, *o/*u], which, in some ways, he seems to treat as phonemic.The theory I favor presently for Dravidian, is that *e is a product of *V+*y and *o a product of *V + *w.[DW]Remember, Bomhard uses Diakonoff's (?) Afro-Asiatic which has the one phonemic vowel, a~@, and a reduced consonant inventory as well, taking out the uvulars.[PCR]Although I have adopted a modified version of this in my critique of his dictionary atI am not so sure that I may not have made a mistake.I reconstruct PAA *a for all Nostratic vowels, andam not convinced that *6 adds much to the equation --- as far as Egyptian and Semitic are concerned. But I am beginning to wonder if the other PAA language families may not be displaying differential reflexes to anumber of different Nostratic vowels. It may be that *a(/*6) is possibly only applicable to Egyptian and Semitic. ??? I am really undecided at the moment. The problem is that I really have no faith in the competing voweled versions of PAA that have been reconstructed by Orel-Stobova and Ehret.I think Semitic patterns have been possibly weighted far too heavily in the reconstruction of PAA, natural, because we have more information about it than about non-Semitic PAA.[DW]Plus I think he favors Kartvelian more when it comes to consonantal reconstruction.[PCR]And with so little reason. Look at his dictionary, and see how few are the Kartvelian reconstructions; and look how much he relies on them for far-reaching conclusions about Nostratic phonology.[DW]Still, I think AB's a little too conservative on his phonemes, while Dolgopolsky is probably too liberal (he has more sibilants among other consonants and seven vowels).I'm probably going to "edit" the roots as far as I am able.[PCR]You might be interested in the "corrections" I have made in the above-linked critique.[DW]I'm also confused about the palatized and labiovelarized velars, plus why does he have only one labiovelarized uvular, /q'w/. Most cases are justified by the occurence of palatal-velar-labiovelar stops in Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic.[PCR]I would be glad to comment further on this question but I would request that you rephrase it. I simply do not understand what you are trying to get at here.PatPATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE@...
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