Greek question

[Patrick C. Ryan]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear Rich and IEists:

-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick C. Ryan <proto-language at email.msn.com>
Date: Wednesday, March 03, 1999 10:45 PM

[ moderator snip ]

>[ Moderator's response:
>  If the Nostratic evidence independently requires 4 series of stops which
>  oppose voicing and aspiration, and it can be shown that in Indo-European
>  the Nostratic voiceless aspirates collapse together with the voiceless
>  plains, well and good:  Cite the etymologies which support this claim.

If you want me to cite individual etymologies, I will be glad to do so but I
have collected a great number of them, illustrating this relationship, in my
Afrasian essay at

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/comparison.AFRASIAN.3.htm

[ Moderator's response:
  I want to see not only individual etymologies, I want to see an exposition of
  the sound laws which drive them.  I want to see not only "the roots of verbs"
  but "the forms of grammar", such that "no philologer could examine them ...
  without believing them to be sprung from some common source."
  --rma ]

>  Otherwise,
>  the Nostratic evidence has nothing to offer for the reconstruction of a
>  series of voiceless aspirates in Indo-European; the few which are claimed
>  are the result of clusters of voiceless plain+laryngeal (specifically,
>  *H_2), although there are those who see the Skt. voiceless aspirates as
>  evidence of Prakrit interference (as the development of *sC to CCh in the
>  Prakrits would provide a source for a hypercorrection of Skt. **sC to the
>  attested sCh, where <C> represents any voiceless plain stop) and do not even
>  accept this laryngeal development while otherwise fully accepting
>  laryngeals.

I could grant that all occurrences of aspirated voiceless stops in Sanskrit
were the result of voiceless stops + H, and still assert that voiceless
aspirated stops should be reconstructed for earliest IE. Actually, what I
have found is that most Sanskrit aspirated voiceless stops *do* correspond
to Afrasian affricates, which is what Egyptian ', D, H, x, and some b,
started out being.

Pat

[ Moderator's response:
  You could assert it, but you have not proven it.  Please remember that this
  is the Indo-European list, and that a relationship with Egyptian cannot be
  *assumed* for your argument, but rather must be demonstrated using accepted
  comparative methodology which addresses the standard model of Indo-European.
  --rma ]