MdG and PIE Glottalics revisited

At 7:54 PM +0300 03/15/02, Pavel Iosad wrote:
>Hi,
>:
>>  >I've already made a language from Indo-European roots. I was hoping to
>>  >find a more comprehensive list somewhere, hopefully over 1000 words.
>>
>>  Look for Gamqrelidze and Ivanov's book on Indo-European (translated
>>  by Johanna Nichols and published by Mouton de Gruyter). It contains
>>  an extensive list of reconstructed PIE forms. G and I are proponents
>>  of the glottalic theory, and the reconstructions reflect that.
>
>Speaking of which, I must voice my discontent over the uneven distribution
>of good publishers... :-) My copy of G&I does not have such a glossary
Oh. It might be in the second volume of the English publication (it
comes in two volumes); I can't remember anymore, and our library's
copy is on loan right now.

BTW, I'm not really excited about MdG; they are reputable, but they
are outrageously expensive. They are publishing (have published?) the
complete works of Edward Sapir, from which series I'd dearly love to
own volume X, Southern Paiute and Ute. They want $320.00 for it. And
it's a *reprint*! That's just ridiculous as far as I'm concerned.

>And, off topic rant, has anyone heard of a second reinterpretation, designed
>to undermine the drawback of the GT itself. I have a book by Starostin who
>says there's a possibility of the three series being unvoiced, unvoiced
>geminates and voiced. This is also typological, and has the virtue of the
>possibility of voicing of initial geminates (suchn things happen, while
>voicing of glottalized initials does not).
I haven't heard of this. The voicing of initial geminates seems an
iffy proposition for two reasons: 1) geminates are generally immune
to lenition processes, and 2) geminates are not usually found in
initial position. So he's replaced one typological oddity with two.
Not a good trade, IMO. But I'd like to see more on it. I'm rather
partial to the glottalic theory, myself.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga                  Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

Man deth swa he byth thonne he mot swa he wile.
'A man does as he is when he can do what he wants.'

- Old English Proverb

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