Funny W

[Rory M Larson]

> > If *W and *R were nasally-released stops, then I don't think we need
anything extra.

> That's essentially just what we've done in positing *W and *R opposing *w
and *r  --we've added a feature to differentiate them phonologically.
You've picked the feature [nasal] to do that, and I don't think that's
unreasonable (some languages have mb and nd as reflexes).  Others of us
have essentially left that feature "blank", and that is what the upper case
letters signify.  Additionally, we find that the "consonantizing" feature
added to *w/*r is often assimilated from an adjacent consonant in a certain
number of cases.  This makes us suspect that there was probably some
"disappeared" consonant responsible in the unexplained cases, and this
leads us back to the laryngeals . . . full circle.  What I'm saying is that
the reconstructions W/mb/wC/Cw along with R/nd/rC/Cr are all in some ways
less than satisfactory and essentially notational variants.

Just to be sure we're clear here, by "nasally-released stop", I mean a full
stop that is released as the corresponding nasal consonant, not as one that
is preceded by one.  Thus, for *W I propose *pm/*bm, not *mb, and for *R I
propose *tn/*dn, not *nd.  Of course, these might easily have reflexes mb
and nd by metathesis, but that's not what I'm proposing for the originals.

I also certainly support continuing to use *W and *R in general historical
reference to these phonemes or clusters.  We can all agree on *W and *R;
what actual values they may have had is an optional discussion.  If an
argument for vanished laryngeals is being made on the assumption that we
need some extra obstruentizing consonant to explain all cases of *W and *R,
then that discussion needs to occur.

What you say above in the two sentences following "Additionally" seems to
be: Since we know that some cases of *W and *R arose from clustering of *w
or *r with an obstruentizing consonant, we can suppose that they all did:
therefore laryngeals.  This is a very reasonable hypothesis for research,
but it is not solid as an argument.  In fact, I think we could just as
easily imagine the reverse: that *W and *R were primary single phonemes in
the language, and that the "explained cases" where they arose from *w and
*r clusters happened because the clusters, or parts of them, sounded
similar enough to pre-existent *W and *R to mimic and merge with them.
Thus, if r? > t? and rh > th in some cases where both [r] and [t] already
exist in the language, why not Cr > CR, where the r > R change is modelled
on a known phoneme R and C acts as a catalyst for the conversion?

In the remark from the previous posting quoted at the top, I was referring
to phonotactic mechanisms with an eye to Occam's razor.  The laryngeal
cluster model for *W and *R requires something happening in the throat
which has since ceased to happen everywhere.  The nasally-released stop
model can account for all the typical reflexes (*W > p, b, m, w; *R > t, d,
n, l) simply by changing the relative timing and intensity of factors (oral
closure, nasal opening, voicing) that are present in many of the reflexes.
Unlike the laryngeal cluster model, it does not require extra factors.

Rory
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