PIE plosives

Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl
Sun Mar 14 00:32:10 UTC 1999


Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk> wrote:

>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

>> It's a generally recognized fact that a PIE stop system *t, *d,
>> *dh is typologically unacceptable.

>Perhaps not so generally.  A number of languages have turned up which
>have voiced aspirates but no voiceless aspirates.  For example, the
>Indonesian language Madurese has a /p/ series, a /b/ series and a /bh/
>series, but no /ph/ series, exactly like the standard reconstruction of
>PIE.

Good point (but Madurese has /b/).   I had always kind of assumed
without looking that Madurese voiced aspirates must be due to
Sanskrit influence, but I see that Mad. has dhu(wa') "2", so
that's presumably the Madurese reflex of PAN *Duwa, where *D is
what?  Retroflex?  And where do the other Madurese voiced
aspirates come from?  Ross?

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



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