Re: CHAT: Glottalized consonants

> Date:         Mon, 17 May 1999 14:17:19 -800
> From: Ed Heil <verbumsapienti@...>
> 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).
Problem is, most of Lehmann's extrapolations beyond PIE don't really
seem to be accepted any more. (Except by Pat Ryan). Something about
him being a structuralist (by training), which constrained his theory
building in ways that current scholarship doesn't think the data can
support.

As far as I can tell, the structural school held to a sort of
reductionism: if we can't tell the difference between two things, they
are the same. Since we don't have the data to be sure that Pre-PIE had
more than one vowel, a structuralist is bound to reconstruct it with
only one vowel. And since one vowel cannot form an opposition, it gets
reduced away too in the next hypothetical pre-stage.

IIRC, there are similar objections to Lehmann's views on the active
stage. They certainly aren't commonly held now.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)