Re: YACQ: Plausibility of a sound change

Tommaso R. Donnarumma <trd@...> writes:

> The passage from glottidalized to voiced is, I think, rather simple:
> if the speaker releases the glottal occlusion prematurely, then you
> have a (partially) voiced consonant.  I believe that this kind of
> anticipatory phaenomena is rather common...
This change, however, goes through an intermediate plain voiceless stage
(or so I think), so the most likely result if glottalized stops go to
voiced is that they take the plain voiceless stops with them:

glottalized     -> plain voiceless -> voiced
plain voiceless -> plain voiceless -> voiced

But this is what is intended to have happened in R. A., anyway.
The aspirated stops then lost their aspiration because they were the
only voiceless stops left.

But why didn't the glottalized stops take the "plain" voiceless stops
with them when they became voiced in PIE?  Well, perhaps the "plain"
stops weren't plain at all when the change occured (they might have been
plain voiceless earlier), but aspirated, and lost their aspiration
afterwards.

> What was wrong was the passage from ejective to aspirated.  I did
> find a tricky explanation for it, but that's what it was:  a tricky,
> and rather unbelievable, explanation.
Hmmm, this probably requires some indirect mechanism (again via plain
voiceless).  But we have to get the old plain voiceless stops out of the
way, lest we lose all contrasts in Kluna, and restore them afterwards.
Perhaps the following happened:

plain voiceless -> voiced          -> plain voiceless
glottalized     -> plain voiceless -> aspirated
aspirated       -> aspirated       -> aspirated

I.e., the plain voiceless stops become voiced, and then the glottalized
stops plain voiceless in a "chain shift".  Then the plain voiceless
stops merge with the aspirated series, and finally, the voiced stops
move back to plain voiceless.

Does this make sense?

Jörg.

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