Re: MdG and PIE Glottalics revisited

Hello,

> >>  >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.
My copy comes in THREE, and no glossary ;-)

> 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.
Ouch. Brutal.
Here in rusia scientific books have until very recently had the virtue of
being very very cheap, but lousily printed. Now they are well published, and
the price is rising, though most books are quite affordable.

> >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.
Well, I don't know. I'm not sure he was talking about geminates, anyway. The
word used is "sil'nyj" (strong), which is sometimes applied to fortes-lenes
oppositions as well (but a fortes-lenes-voiced three way distinction is a
bit strange, to say the least). The geminate impression I got from the fact
that he uses a colon to mark these p:, t:, k:.

Anyway, here's the exact quote:

Starostin S. A., Burlak S. A., Vvedenije v lingvisticheskuju
komparativistiku (An Introduction to Linguistic Comparative Studies),
Moscow, 2001. P. 118 - 119

[quote]It is possible that the PIE system was similar to the one in Udi
(Udin, Uti, a Lezgian language) and consists of unvoiced, voiced and
"strong" consonants.

p  (p:)  b
t   t:    d
k   k:   g

In Udi p: also exists, but, as in PIE, this phoneme is quite rare. We shall
note that in systems with both strong [no quotes] and glottalized consonants
(such as in Archi), the lacuna is usually where the strong one is: thus, in
Archi p, b, p. [dot marks glottalization] are present, but p: is absent
(while t: and k: are present as well).

In similar Caucasian systems unvoiced consonants get facultative aspiration;
in PIE, evidently, so did the voiced.

Such a hypothesis adjusts the "Glottalic" theory, proposing reconstructing
unvoiced (strong) consonants instead of glottalized ones with the following
rules of development:

1) In Germanic and Armenian t(h) > th (in Germanic, with further
fricativization), d(h) >d, t: > t (it may be noted that Armenian is
geographically adjacent to Udi)

2) In all other languages - voicing of the strong consonants in all
positions (similar processes happen in Lezgian languages, such as Rutul and
Tabassaran, and also in Kabardian...)[unquote]

Well, anyway, that's all that has been written in the book. It is actually a
lecture course (no reference is given here), and in another year or a couple
I hope I'll be having those lectures anyway. But no more that I can say now
:-)

Pavel