DLW's Final Missive

[iffr762 at utxvms.cc.utexas.edu]

	It occurs to me that before desubscribing I did not finish what I
was saying about the PIE plosive system.
	I think the voiced series was pharyngealized.  This would predict
both a labial gap and a labio-velar gap, which does not occur, but if the
labio-velars were at some point uvulars, and only later developed into
labio-velars (where they did), this is not a problem.
	Whether such a theory/notion predicts the abence/rarity of roots
of the form /DED/ is another matter.  It might.  If both Cs were
pharyngealized, then the nature of the gesture in question is such that it
would almost certainly have to be carrried across the V.  So if for some
reason, some folks did not much like this, that would work.  That reason
might be either 1) that pharyngealization would alter the character of the
V, moving it in the direction of [o], or 2) that pharyngealization might
somehow interfere with a distinction of fortis/lenis (in MCVs terms,
"stiff voice vs. slack voice" might be better), that was being made in the
Vs.  I suspect the second is more likely to be true, though I am not
enough a phonetician to know how.
	Anyway, now that I am gone feel free to go ahead and call me "all
sorts of perfectly true and applicable names", as Tolkien might say, or
pehaps to send me emissives of praise extolling my manifest and manifold
virtues, or whatever.  My great swan-dive into the Flames of Well-Merited
Oblivion officially begins now:   down, down, down, CRASH (not to mention
screams of agony, etc.).

					DLW