Re: CHAT: Glottalized consonants
| From: | Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Monday, May 17, 1999, 14:44 |
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At 20:27 14/05/99 PDT, you wrote:
>Lars Mathiesen wrote:
>
>>There are other versions than the glottalic theory of Gamkrelidze and
>>Ivanov --- but (from what I see on the Indo-European list) there seems
>>to be wide agreement that the values of t-d-dh (assigned a hundred
>>years ago by the Neogrammarians) are not only unlikely as an actual
>>phonological system, they don't actually account very well for the
>>facts either. So something has to be put instead, but the question is
>>what.
>
>The Neogrammarian system is a clear violation of linguistic universals, but
>of course Greenberg came after the Neogrammarians. A voiced stop implies a
>voiceless counterpart, so there would have to either be a four-way
>distinction as in Sanskrit and daughter languages (t-th-d-dh), or the
>three-way with ejective of Armenian (t-t'-d).
>
>
>>(The active/stative thing, on the other hand, just seems to be roundly
>>ignored).
>
>True. I'm not even sure how active/stative works, but from what I read I-E
>probably started as an active language, then became ergative, then finally
>nominative-accusative. (I forget what Hittite and Anatolian languages was;
>I think they were ergative, but I'm not sure...)
>
I think Hittite and Anatolian languages were ergative, but I think also I
heard it was supposed to be innovations of those languages, not
conservation of a feature of PIE.
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)? I've just had
this idea and I don't find it unlikely. It's just an idea I had when
writing this post, so maybe it has already been argued against, but I don't
know.
>Danny
>
>
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