Re: CHAT: Glottalized consonants

>>         BTW, has anyone heard of a theory which would say that PIE
>> was an active language that evolved to accusative somewhere (most IE
>> languages) and to ergative somewhere else (Hittite and Anatolian
>> languages)?
>
>Typologically, active languages are very rare, and AFAIK there's no
>evidence to support such a type for PIE or its prestages. So I'd very
>much doubt that anyone's working on that now. (See my earlier post on
>the ideological reason for this view being held in Russia earlier).
>
>Also, most people who think active languages evolve into accusative
>ones, believe that they go through an ergative stage first. So an
>active prestage doesn't explain ergative daughter languages, should
>they exist, better than an ergative prestage would.
Winifred P. Lehmann supports exactly this theory; it is discussed extensively
in his book _Theoretical Bases for Proto-Indo-European_ (I believe that's the
title).

Ed
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