Indo-European Phonology

[Patrick C. Ryan]

Dear Allan and IEists:

-----Original Message-----
From: Bomhard at aol.com <Bomhard at aol.com>
Date: Monday, March 15, 1999 3:56 AM

Thank you for an excellent summary of the work that has been done on IE
phonology.

For the record, I subscribe to the Glottalic Theory. I believe that IE
[b/d/g] can best be explained as a result of (pre-)Nostratic [?p/?t/?k],
with pre-glottalization of the voiceless stops.

But I also reconstruct glottalized affricates [?pf/?ts/?kx], which, I
believe, on the strength of the AA reflexes, became IE [bh/dh/gh].

I think you have done better than anyone else I know in properly
reconstructing affricates for Nostratic.

But to your [ts], I would add [pf/kx]. It is the merger of this series of
voiceless and aspirated affricates into plain voiceless aspirated stops
[ph/th/kh] which has unbalanced the system typologically.

Of course, I also agree with you that it is perfectly legitimate to
reconstruct palatalized varieties in each stop or affricate configuration
but I do not believe that velarized stops are reflected in the daughter
languages as allophones of the simple stop and affricate series.

IE g{w} and k{w} are the missing dorsal fricatives ([x/x{h}]) that should be
reconstructed for Nostratic since they show up in AA as fricatives (Arabic
S; Egyptian S and X).

Thus, I believe the plan of glottalized and aspirated stops and affricates +
representive fricatives in all positions ([f,v ->w; s,z ->s; G,x ->
g{w}/k{w}]) represents a typologically balanced system that alows for all
developments in the derived languages.

Pat