Three-Way Contrast of Secondary Articulations in PIE

[Stanley Friesen]

At 12:18 PM 5/1/01 -0500, proto-language wrote:
>Dear Stanley and IEists:
>[SF]

>> But even then, what I see in the PIE vocabulary is many homonymous *roots*,
>> but relative fewer homonymous *words*.  The main distinguishing factors
>> were differences in suffixes and stem formants - and occasionally infixes.

>[PCR]

>First, there are no infixes in IE.

I am not sure what else to call the nasal present formation.  It sure isn't
a suffix!

Let's see, from the root *bheug you get the present *bhunegti. Looks like
an infix to me.

>Second, for these 'roots' to be able to have maintained semantic integrity,
>they must have been distinguishable in some fashion. The suffixes, etc.
>(better root-extensions) are an attempt to continue distinctions that were
>lost with the glides.

While I agree many of the roots probably originally were distinct, I do not
think we yet have sufficient information to tell in what manner.  I
certainly doubt there was a single cause for all of the mergers.

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May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net