Re: Introducing myself to the list

John Cowan wrote:

> Which neatly accounts for why b- hardly exists in classical PIE, contrary to
> all normal evidence which says that if you lack one of p- or b-, it's p- you lack
> (Arabic, e.g.).  Having p'- be rare doesn't violate any norm I know of.
No, it's in fact somewhat odd to find it in phonological inventories.  Of all the
languages that have a glottalic series of stop consonans, only about a third of
them have /p'/, while virtually all of that same category have /t'/ and /k'/.  That's
rather striking considering how unmarked labials usually are.

A lot of the arguing going on in the PIE community about PIE's obstruent series
seems to center around whether to admit typological evidence like that.

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: trwier
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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