phonetic resemblances etc.

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk> wrote:

>>            Mamulique   Garza      Comecrudo
>>
>>  moon      kan        an         eskan
>>  man       (kessem)   knarxe     na
>>  woman     kem        kem        kem
>
>[..]
>
>Third, the words for 'moon' suggest a loss of initial /k/ in Garza only.  But
>the words for 'man' suggest a loss of initial /k/ in Comecrudo only.  Yet the
>words for 'woman' suggest a loss of initial /k/ in no language at all.  And
>this is supposed to point to implicit sound laws.

That's a rather unfair, or shall we say pessimistic, analysis of
the data.   A more optimistic analysis (and I do believe a more
realistic one) would be to reconstruct *kan (with k- maintained
in Comecrudo after prefix es-), *kna- (cf. English *kn- > n- and
*kV- > k-) and *gem (or *kh ~ *k instead of *k ~ *g).

Still, Larry is right that in the absence of additional data it's
impossible to decide between the pessimistic and the optimistic
analyses.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam