zompist bboard

There recently have been some discussions of Proto-Indo-European phonology in where it is a tangent, so I have decided to open a new thread here in L&L for such discussions (not only of phonology but also for all other things PIE).

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...brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Tha cvastam émi cvastam santham amal phelsa. -- Friedrich Schiller
ESTAR-3SG:P human-OBJ only human-OBJ true-OBJ REL-LOC play-3SG:A

1) Why does PIE lack *b in native roots? (Roots that are neither borrowings nor imitations nor cradle words.)
2a) Why can't a voiceless stop and voiced aspirated stop exist together in a root?
2b) Why can't two voiced stops exist together in a root?

Can someone explain to me how to figure out the different transcriptions and to switch between them when necessary?

I'm used to the h h h system, but there are others that I see less frequently, and when compiling data, I find it hard to read.

Also, what is H, h, h and h?

I know Hamp/Sen use h and h, but Lehmann uses <ʔ> and that's just a bit confusing if you don't remember what it is.

Furthermore, my Dictionary of Proto-Indo-European Roots uses a different transcription (doesn't use laryngeals or palatals, I think), one that indicates a "later" PIE, but also uses the old H transcription to describe entries after the new transcription as well.

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[bɹ̠ˤʷɪs.təɫ]
Nōn quālibet inīquā cupiditāte illectus hoc agō
Yo te pongo en tu lugar...
Taisc mach Daró

I believe h is another way of denoting H.

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Blog:

But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

The glottalic theory (see wikipedia) attempts to explain the (almost) non-existence of /b/ and root structure (as well as stuff like Grimm's Law in Germanic and Armenian). IIRC the voiceless/voiced/aspirated becomes voiceless/ejective/voiced. Ejective /p'/ is apparently hard to pronounce [citation needed] and the root constraints seem to be typologically plausible in languages with such a glottalic system [citation needed].

h is an a-coloring laryngeal, which is reconstructed in places were Hittite doesn't preserve the laryngeal. In contrast, the other a-coloring laryngeal h is preserved in Hittite. To put it in another way: *he becomes ha and *he becomes a in Hittite. (I've also seen h in reconstructions, when the nature of the a-coloring laryngeal is uncertain, because the word isn't preserved in Anatolian). Personally I think reconstructing this extra laryngeal is unnecessary: *he might as well be *ha or even simply *a.

I'm not going to touch the phonetic values of the other laryngeals, but h is usually assumed to be the glottal stop.

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"Was ist ist, was nicht ist ist möglich"

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...brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Tha cvastam émi cvastam santham amal phelsa. -- Friedrich Schiller
ESTAR-3SG:P human-OBJ only human-OBJ true-OBJ REL-LOC play-3SG:A

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Ο ορανς τα ανα̨ριθομον ϝερρον εͱεν ανθροποτροφον.
Το̨ ανθροπς αυ̨τ εκψον επ αθο̨ οραναμο̨ϝον.
Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν.

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...brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Tha cvastam émi cvastam santham amal phelsa. -- Friedrich Schiller
ESTAR-3SG:P human-OBJ only human-OBJ true-OBJ REL-LOC play-3SG:A

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OMG AN ACTUAL CONPOST WTFBBQ

Formerly known as Drydic.

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...brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Tha cvastam émi cvastam santham amal phelsa. -- Friedrich Schiller
ESTAR-3SG:P human-OBJ only human-OBJ true-OBJ REL-LOC play-3SG:A

What's up with the 1st.sing.nom pronoun? It seems to fit oddly into the pronoun paradigm. For roughly the same reason, what is up with the /*s/ of the masc. and fem. 3d.sing.nom v. /*t/.

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...brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Tha cvastam émi cvastam santham amal phelsa. -- Friedrich Schiller
ESTAR-3SG:P human-OBJ only human-OBJ true-OBJ REL-LOC play-3SG:A

Here's something which concerns me. Some sources - Beekes for example - deny the existence of /a/ in PIE, and many deny /b/ also. Szemerényi mentions that the existence of /c/ (an affricate more commonly known as /ts/) has been tried to be proved and failed. Next up for removal is presumably /d/. So, how long will it be before PIEists eventually work their way through the entire alphabet and conclude that PIE had no phonemes at all?

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Non fidendus est crocodilus quis posteriorem dentem acerbum conquetur.

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- -

PIE was not a language.

Well, talk now goes it was a dialect continuum, so no it wasn't a single language it seems.

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OMG AN ACTUAL CONPOST WTFBBQ

Formerly known as Drydic.

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vec

how does that explain the near-absence of /b/? does he say it all shifted to bh or?

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Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.