Re: Nostratic (was Re: Schwebeablaut (was Re: tolkien?))

Quoting Tristan McLeay <zsau@...>:

> On Sun, 21 Dec 2003, Joe wrote:
>
> > John Cowan wrote:
> >
> > >Yes, the so-called "glottal theory", which reinterprets the traditional
> > >voiced-aspirated / voiced / voiceless stops as voiced / voiceless ejective
> /
> > >voiceless respectively.  There are two main advantages to this:  1) It
> > >is typologically more reasonable.  No known language has voiced aspirated
> > >stops without voiceless aspirated ones.  2) It neatly accounts for the
> > >rarity of traditional *b, since it is known that labial ejectives are
> > >less common than non-labial ones.
> >
> > It would make the Germanic b>p g>k, etc. look more reasonable, too.
>
> There's nothing unreasonable about it. All you need to do is aspirate (and
> eventually---cf. Greek, German---fricate) the voiceless stops. Later the
> voiced-aspir/voiced/voiceless gets re-analysed as voiced/voiceless/
> aspirate (again, cf. German and apparently Australian English,* though
> ignoring the v-aspir -> voiced in both).
There's German dialects which have merged /b d g/ with /p t k/. I'll have to
dig out that poem which rhymed _beide_ and _heute_ again ... (['bai.d@] and
['hOy.t@] in standard Modern High German, following Duden's pronunciation
guide.)

                                                     Andreas