Uralic and IE

[Glen Gordon]

MODERATOR:
   Why would a glottal stop "certainly not be" a distinct phoneme?
   I can think of several languages off the top of my head in which it
   is, so there is no reason other than _a priori_ bias to reject in
   for PIE.

Are you speaking again? Think all you want about several languages.
Have a linguist party and invite your multilingual friends. You seem
to have no clue what "bias" means as your "biasedly"
quick-to-respond comments would indicate. I'm strictly talking about
IE itself and my "bias" is motivated purely by observations within IE
itself.

It is because of pairs like *tuH and *twe (and other phenomena) which
lead me to believe that there were, on top of long vowels from loss of
laryngeals, differing lengthes of vowels determined by stress accent
and shape of syllable which cause some of the anomalies present WITHIN
IE. Hence a more credible *tu:/*twe without "intrusive and
inexplicable H" fully explainable by accent.

I'm surprised someone who wishes to take the topic away from external
focus should be talking about "several" outside languages. I'm not
concerned whether Abkhaz for instance has medial glottal stops or not.
I AM concerned about whether IE had medial *H1 and I find no
indication so far that this necessarily has to be the case.

If you do, speak or forever hold your peace and reserve words like
"bias" for proper occasions.

--------------------------------------------
Glen Gordon
glengordon01 at hotmail.com
Kisses and Hugs
--------------------------------------------

[ Moderator's response:

  >Message-ID: <19990412011754.39210.qmail at hotmail.com>
  >From: "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01 at hotmail.com>
  >Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 18:17:52 PDT

  >Well, here's my current position. I accept *H2 and *H3 as being /h/
  >and /h<w>/ respectively (and thus parallel to the velars). *H1 on the
  >other hand is at most a glottal stop which, iff it occured at all,
  >certainly would not have been a distinct phoneme.

  Your original statement reads as an _a priori_ rejection of glottal stop as
  a possible phoneme in any language.  That may not be what you meant, but it
  is assuredly what you wrote, and on that basis, I asked the question above.

  Further, I was not thinking of any of the Caucasian languages (some of which,
  as you note, have a glottal stop phoneme), but of the Polynesian languages.
  It is always permissible, in Indo-European studies as anywhere else in
  linguistics, to cite parallels from other languages; it is simply off-topic
  on this list to discuss other languages to the exclusion of Indo-European,
  more especially so when there exist fora in which to discuss them.
  --rma ]