"centum"/"satem" "exceptions" [was Re: Northwest IE attributes]

[Sean Crist]

On Thu, 20 Jan 2000, Richard M. Alderson III wrote:

> These and similar "exceptions" to so-called "satemization" were seen by
> the Neogrammarians as evidence for a third series of dorsal obstruents
> in PIE, that is, that along side the palatovelar *k{^y} and the
> labiovelar *k{^w}, there was a "plain" velar (or possibly back velar)
> *k.

> Since then, it has been argued that PIE had either (1) palatals and
> velars, and labiovelars are a late development, or (2) plain velars and
> labiovelars, and palatals are a late development.  Today's consensus
> view seems to be a third alternative, that PIE had palatals and
> labiovelars, and plain velars are an odd development of one or both.

The first view, which you attribute to the Neogrammarians, is the majority
view today.

The main objections to the view that IE had three series of dorsals are 1)
that there are no known examples of such a consonant system among the
modern languages of the world, and 2) that no daughter language maintains
the supposed three-way contrast intact.

#1 is simply wrong; there are such languages.  #2 is also wrong, since
Luvian of the Anatolian group maintains the three-way dorsal contrast.
However, objection #2 is simply irrelevant; it represents a
misunderstanding of the comparative method.  Even if no daughter language
maintained the contrast, we'd still have three correspondence series among
the daughter languages, with no clear phonologically conditioning
environment which would allow us to collapse two of the series; so we
follow the methodology and reconstruct three sets of series for the
proto-language.

> Further, remember that there are other "satem"  branches, such as
> Armenian and Albanian.

That's not correct; Armenian underwent an independent set of consonant
changes which roughly resemble Grimm's Law in Germanic.  Armenian did not
undergo the satem consonant shift.

As for Albanian, I can't say much; it's so heavily mutated that it's not
of much use in reconstructing PIE, and I know next to nothing about the
sound changes it underwent.  I can say that I've never heard anyone claim
that Albanian underwent the satem shift.

  \/ __ __    _\_     --Sean Crist  (kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu)
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