PIE *gn- > know/ken

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk> wrote:

>Not wanting to open the whole can of worms again, let me just ask this: Is
>a change from lenis to voiced stop natural and frequently seen?

I think so.  English and Danish (fortis-lenis) vs. Dutch
(voiceless-voiced), for instance.  Or East Armenian vs. West
Armenian.  Finnish vs. Estonian (or is that just the spelling?).

>If it is not part of general experience I do not see the commending
>simplicity in choosing "lenis t" as the origin of Latin, Greek and Indic
>plain voiced d. Where "d" and "dh" merged, they are voiced, as in
>Balto-Slavic, Celtic and Albanian - why derive this from a basically
>voiceless protoform?

Hittite and Tocharian appear not to have voicing contrast.  Parts
of Germanic and Armenian don't have it.  In Germanic and Armenian
*d is voiceless, in Greek and Proto-Italic *dh is, so voicedness
is not a necessary characteristic of *d and *dh (whereas *t is
always voiceless/fortis).

>- Isn't the only thing "wrong" with the IE system
>that the aspirated tenues (ph, th, kh ...) have not been accepted?

Murmured stops are extremely uncommon. There's also the matter of
*b.  A labial series *p, *bh simply doesn't make any sense, not
even if you add a teaspoon of *ph's.

>Then,
>if we have SOME evidence for asp.ten., but not enough to guarantee
>reconstruction of an overwhelming number of etymologies, but without them
>the system as such becomes a truly overwhelming mess, isn't the easiest
>solution then to accept that SOME etymologies containing ph, th, kh are
>correct and that the PIE system was as in Sanskrit?  Is it not a very
>strong claim that ALL cases of asp.ten. are in last analysis based on
>mistakes?

Not mistakes, but stop+laryngeal, I think.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam

[ Moderator's comment:
  I think the reference to "mistakes" is to my comment regarding the idea that
  Skt. voiceless aspirates are a hypercorrection in the language as transmitted
  by Prakrit speakers.
  --rma ]