r and s in Turkic

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Lyle Campbell <l.campbell at ling.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
 
>No one with a sense of
>phonology postulates the reverse, the unnatural and implausible changes of
>*r > z/s  and  *l > Z/S, which are almost unknown in languages elsewhere
 
Whatever happened in Turkic, and I have no opinion, what keeps the
debate going (apart from the lack of hard evidence either way,
despite Stefan's pir < baZZ) would seem to be that both changes are
equally likely.  The Altaicist (and Nostraticist) argument is of
course not based on plain *r and *l, but on palatalized/fricative
*r^(> z) and *l^ (> s^), cf. Polish and Hebrew, respectively.
 
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam