Motivating the Root Restrictions of PIE

[Stanley Friesen]

At 12:01 PM 11/28/00 -0600, David L. White wrote:
>         Yes, I am serious.  And yes, what I posit is typologically weird,
>but what more normal system motivates the root restrictions?  Are we to
>imagine that these were invented out of sheer phonological perversity?  It
>is, obviously, a matter of the relative claims of typology versus
>motivation.

I do not think it is quite that simple.

Many of my ideas on the phonetics of PIE came from a symposium I read - I
think it was "The New Sound of PIE" or something like that.  In addition to
several articles supporting some variant of the glottalic hypothesis, there
were several proposing various less radical alternatives.  As I remember it
(vaguely), some of these articles addressed the issue of motivation of the
root restrictions within their respective models.  The glottalic approach
does not have a monopoly on providing a possible answer to the basis for
these constraints.

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May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com