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<p><tt>> > If *W and *R were nasally-released stops, then I don't think we need anything extra.<br>
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> That's essentially just what we've done in positing *W and *R opposing *w and *r --we've added a feature to differentiate them phonologically. You've picked the feature [nasal] to do that, and I don't think that's unreasonable (some languages have mb and nd as reflexes). Others of us have essentially left that feature "blank", and that is what the upper case letters signify. Additionally, we find that the "consonantizing" feature added to *w/*r is often assimilated from an adjacent consonant in a certain number of cases. This makes us suspect that there was probably some "disappeared" consonant responsible in the unexplained cases, and this leads us back to the laryngeals . . . full circle. What I'm saying is that the reconstructions W/mb/wC/Cw along with R/nd/rC/Cr are all in some ways less than satisfactory and essentially notational variants.<br>
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<tt>Just to be sure we're clear here, by "nasally-released stop", I mean a full stop that is released as the corresponding nasal consonant, not as one that is preceded by one. Thus, for *W I propose *pm/*bm, not *mb, and for *R I propose *tn/*dn, not *nd. Of course, these might easily have reflexes mb and nd by metathesis, but that's not what I'm proposing for the originals.</tt><br>
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<tt>I also certainly support continuing to use *W and *R in general historical reference to these phonemes or clusters. We can all agree on *W and *R; what actual values they may have had is an optional discussion. If an argument for vanished laryngeals is being made on the assumption that we need some extra obstruentizing consonant to explain all cases of *W and *R, then that discussion needs to occur.</tt><br>
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<tt>What you say above in the two sentences following "Additionally" seems to be: Since we know that some cases of *W and *R arose from clustering of *w or *r with an obstruentizing consonant, we can suppose that they all did: therefore laryngeals. This is a very reasonable hypothesis for research, but it is not solid as an argument. In fact, I think we could just as easily imagine the reverse: that *W and *R were primary single phonemes in the language, and that the "explained cases" where they arose from *w and *r clusters happened because the clusters, or parts of them, sounded similar enough to pre-existent *W and *R to mimic and merge with them. Thus, if r? > t? and rh > th in some cases where both [r] and [t] already exist in the language, why not Cr > CR, where the r > R change is modelled on a known phoneme R and C acts as a catalyst for the conversion?</tt><br>
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<tt>In the remark from the previous posting quoted at the top, I was referring to phonotactic mechanisms with an eye to Occam's razor. The laryngeal cluster model for *W and *R requires something happening in the throat which has since ceased to happen everywhere. The nasally-released stop model can account for all the typical reflexes (*W > p, b, m, w; *R > t, d, n, l) simply by changing the relative timing and intensity of factors (oral closure, nasal opening, voicing) that are present in many of the reflexes. Unlike the laryngeal cluster model, it does not require extra factors.</tt><br>
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<tt>Rory</tt><br>
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