h- in Turkic

[Alexander Vovin]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Alexis,
 
      I think your message regarding initial h- raises one important
methodological issue. Namely, can we allow a reconstruction of a segment
for a proto-language that is preserved in a single language of otherwise
big language family, and for which there is no second independent
evidence? It seems that you would answer that question in the affirmative
in this particular case, although I remember that once you yourself were
bashing (quite justifiable, in my opinion, a person X from Moscow
Nostratic school for search of IE and Nostratic accent distinctions
uniquely preserved in Bengali). I would hate to disagree with you on
Khaladj h-, but I think I have to. I would answer in the negative to the
question I posed above, although I think that some exceptions could be
allowed when a language that unikely preserves segment X, is on the top of
the branching. In all other cases it is much safer to reconstruct
something, especially something radical, like PT *h- on the basis of two
independent pieces of evidence. Khaladj is probably *close* to the root of
Turkic tree, but it does not represent primary branching, I think. It will
be dangerous enough to reconstruct PT *h- on its sole evidence (although I
think that this might eventually turn out to be true -- let us see), but
looking for the traces of something Nostratic in khaladj *only*, does not
seem to be very realistic.
 
Cheers,
 
Sasha
 
=======================================
Alexander Vovin
Associate Professor of Japanese
Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures
382 Moore Hall
1890 East-West Road
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Honolulu, HI 96822
vovin at hawaii.edu
fax (808)956-9515 (o.)
t.(808)956-6881 (o.)