The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread's Sequel

[WeepingElf]

No, the original glottalic theory was that they were ejectives. Proposals for *D as a voiced glottalized series of some sort came much later, as "Cao Bang theory" - Cao Bang being a Tai variety that shifted *ˀD *D > D Dh, with the idea being that Greek, Armenian, and Indic did the same. (What happens in Nuristani? Is the Iranian *D/*Dh merger secondary within IIr?)

Yes. And the argument that some languages with ejectives (such as the Semitic languages) lack a labial ejective doesn't work with implosives - because in languages with implosives, the labial implosive tends to be the most frequent of them all. Indeed, there are languages, such as Mayan, where the labial implosive is the only implosive. What you call the "Cao Bang theory" is an attempt at a compromise between the traditional and the glottalic model which may at most be posited as a transitional stage between a glottalic Early PIE and a traditional Late PIE.

[Moose-tache]

... your system in a way stands on its head: the least marked stops (the neutral ones) are the least common, and why then is *b so rare? Yet, I can't say that you were wrong.

In this analysis, the D series is neutral to phonation. If every root has a phonation quality, there is no reason to assume that the "least marked" would be the most common. For example, in Mandarin, the neutral tone is the least common tone quality for a root to have, despite being the least marked by definition. We could speculate that some D merged with T or Dh in words that had no phonation, but we don't have to. There's nothing weird about the neutral series being uncommon.*
As for */b/, I don't see "it's rare because it's the weakest articulation" being any harder to accept than "it's rare because labial ejectives are rare." The reality is that */b/ is never going to be a "difficult" phoneme to get rid of, in any theory. Did it become a voiced fricative and merge with */w/? Did it merge with P or Bh? Did it disappear at some primordial stage when its pronunciation was radically different? All are plausible alternatives. If we were reconstructing Latin, we wouldn't need to make a version of Latin where the letter H was something weirdly unstable to explain its absence in daughter languages. Similarly, I don't think it is essential that */b/ be reconstructed standing on an X under a suspended piano.

Fair. Yet, I feel that this is more complicated than my "aspiration theory" (to recall: *T is aspirated, everything else as in the standard model), and it involves phonation types that are otherwise unknown in Europe (but then we don't know what kind of "phonetic landscape" was in place in Eastern Europe 5,000 years ago!). But maybe my "aspiration theory" is problematic in other respects, and of course, I may be wrong.

Well, you kind of answered your own question. Even within historic times we know that the phonological landscape can change quite dramatically. Note that I'm not saying "This is definitely what happened, because it doesn't seem obviously wrong to me." That's the kind of attitude I dislike in historical linguistics. I'm merely presenting what I think is the most plausible version of a phonation distinction, if it was a phonation distinction that divided the plosives into series.

* Also, is the D series uncommon? The gap of */b/ is conspicuous, but the rest of the series seems normal. A quick glance at Wiktionary shows more roots that begin with */d/ than */d_h/.

[Nortaneous]

Yes. And the argument that some languages with ejectives (such as the Semitic languages) lack a labial ejective doesn't work with implosives - because in languages with implosives, the labial implosive tends to be the most frequent of them all. Indeed, there are languages, such as Mayan, where the labial implosive is the only implosive. What you call the "Cao Bang theory" is an attempt at a compromise between the traditional and the glottalic model which may at most be posited as a transitional stage between a glottalic Early PIE and a traditional Late PIE.

What Michael Weiss calls the Cao Bang theory is a revision of the glottalic model (which was motivated by real problems with the aspirate model!) after it was shown to be in dire need of revision. Sometimes a promising line of inquiry starts with an initial formulation that turns out to be untenable. Even Grimm's Law was wrong until Verner! The *D series can't have been ejectives, but that doesn't mean we're stuck with T D Dh. And voiced aspirates wouldn't be the first time an early areal development was projected too far back: some PIE renderings of Schleicher's Fable have the augment.

I think the typological universal about the distribution of implosive POAs isn't as much of a problem as it's made out to be - there's close precedent in Maay. (Where did implosives in Maay come from? How well reconstructed is Cushitic?) And there are a few languages with /ɗ/ and no other implosives - could this pattern develop from an earlier and more normal *ɓ *ɗ by unsystematic sonorantization[?] of the labial? This has already been proposed for PIE to explain the absence of *b and presence of the typologically unusual *wR-. Index Diachronica has an entry "ɓ ɗ → m d", which is close... And are we even sure that the category of "implosive" is sound? Maybe the PIE implosives weren't the same type of implosive as the Mayan ones.

It seems like a promising direction, at least, and the aspirate model does have some pretty dire problems of its own. I'd go further than Roland Pooth, though - he gives T Ɗ Dh.

[WeepingElf]

What do you mean by the "aspirate model"? The standard model, or my suggestion that *T was aspirated? If the latter, what are the "dire problems" with it?

[Travis B.]

What do you mean by the "aspirate model"? The standard model, or my suggestion that *T was aspirated? If the latter, what are the "dire problems" with it?

Is suspect Nortaneous means the conventional T D Dh model.

[Richard W]

Implosives became nasals in Vietnamese and ɗ~ˀl interchange is attested in Tsou.

Support: Preglottalised stops, although only amounting to /ʔb/ and /ʔd/, change to /m/ and /n/ in some varieties of Northern Zhuang and of Shan and Northern Shan. /ʔb/ may also change to /v/ or /w/ instead, depending on the region, and /ʔd/ to /l/. These changes are all mergers. Source: Edmondsdon in Shan and other Northern Tier Southeast Tai Languages of Myanmar and China: Themes and Variations, in the Tai-Kadai Languages (2008).

[WeepingElf]

What do you mean by the "aspirate model"? The standard model, or my suggestion that *T was aspirated? If the latter, what are the "dire problems" with it?

Is suspect Nortaneous means the conventional T D Dh model.

I guess so, too. And I wouldn't call the problems with the conventional model "dire".

[anteallach]

OK - I apologize for the misunderstandings.

Indeed, the phonation types of the stops are currently one of the hottest topics in IE comparative linguistics; just about everybody admits that the standard model is so for mainly historical reasons and relies more on Sanskrit than it ought to, and that it accounts for the reflexes quite well but has its problems.

Let's take stock of the facts:

1. PIE clearly had three types of stops, or consonants reflected as stops in most IE languages, traditionally called "voiceless", "voiced" and "voiced aspirated", usually written *T, *D and *Dh. Models with fewer types cannot account for the facts, and there is no good evidence for the existence of a fourth type, after the Sanskrit voiceless aspirated stops have turned out to be secondary (*T + laryngeal).

2. Of these three types, *T is clearly the most frequent, and reflected by plain voiceless stops everywhere except in Germanic (where they become voiceless fricatives, sometimes secondarily voiced by Verner's Law, except in some clusters) and Armenian (where they are normally aspirated, but in some contexts, yet various different things). They are therefore usually reconstructed as plain voiceless stops.

3. *D is the least common type, though not very much less common than *Dh, and reflected as plain voiced stops except in Germanic and Armenian which both have voiceless stops here. They are therefore usually reconstructed as plain voiced stops.

4. *Dh is clearly distinct from *D, though they merge with *D in most languages. Of the languages where they don't, Indo-Aryan (but not Iranian, which belongs to the many languages with a *D/*Dh merger) has breathy-voiced stops, also some Armenian dialects, and there is some evidence for such reflexes in Old Armenian; Greek has voiceless aspirated stops; Italic has fricatives that are voiceless initially and voiced medially; Germanic has voiced sounds which are in some contexts stops and in others fricatives. They are therefore usually reconstructed as "voiced aspirated" stops.

5. The resulting system is typologically rare; apparently, the only known language with such a system is Kelabit, an obscure Austronesian language somewhere in the jungles of Borneo. This, however, is a rather weak argument against the traditional reconstruction, because rare systems occur, and the PIE system apparently was unstable as every language has changed it (yes, even the Indo-Aryan languages did, by adding a fourth type, voiceless aspirated stops, thereby changing it into a neat 2x2 grid).

6. There was something like an assimilation rule in place which evidently affected *T and *Dh but not *D, which probably means that they once had a common feature at the exclusion of *D.

7. There was something like a dissimilation rule in place which affected the *D set, which probably means that they either had a highly marked realization (such as ejectives) or, to the contrary, were something weak and volatile (such as voiced fricatives).

While facts #1-#4 speak for the traditional reconstruction, facts #5-#7 speak against it. The question is which alternative reconstruction can make sense of all these facts with the least effort. Meanwhile, it is not necessary that #6 and #7 are satisfied in Late PIE; the assimilation and dissimilation rules may have been effective in an earlier period when the system was different from that at the time of breakup.

It's always seemed to me to make a lot of sense that there was something close to the traditional reconstruction at breakup but that this had evolved fairly recently from something more like the glottalic model, explaining why some of the constraints on the *D series look like those which might be expected for ejectives.

Of course PIE presumably had some dialectal variation and the exact phonation types of these series may not have been the same everywhere.

[Nortaneous]

What do you mean by the "aspirate model"? The standard model, or my suggestion that *T was aspirated? If the latter, what are the "dire problems" with it?

Is suspect Nortaneous means the conventional T D Dh model.

I guess so, too. And I wouldn't call the problems with the conventional model "dire".

Why not? T Dh forming a class to the exclusion of D, the most highly marked stop class, which patterns like an ejective series? A completely unattested (not even Kelabit) plosive system, as Jakobson pointed out in 1957? The fact that only a single areal grouping provides evidence for voiced aspirates? And what happened to **b? The plosive MOA system is known to be the most problematic aspect of the current reconstructed phonology, aside from the nonhigh vowels.

I don't think Italic provides good evidence for voiced aspirates. *D > *Ð with various degrees of secondary devoicing (cf. Austronesian 'intervocalic devoicing') doesn't seem too much worse than *Dh > *Th > *Θ with medial voicing in Latin (and post-nasal voicing in Umbrian), and I might be wrong about this but *Dh > Ð seems like taking "voiced aspirate" too literally - if that can happen I'd imagine it'd be attested elsewhere, and I've never seen it. (Dao Ngan Day, maybe?)

Cao Bang shows *T *Tr *ˀD *D > T Th D Dh, but the development of voiceless aspirates preceded the chain shift of *Ɗ *D > D Dh. The shift *D > Dh (> Th) is of course well-known, and Madurese (which shows *T *D > T Th, with a new D series arising at some point from glide fortition and loans) suggests that it can happen even without pre-existing aspirates. Given that it's possible to get the Indic (*TH > Th, *ˀD *D > D Dh as in Cao Bang) and Armenian (*T > Th, *ˀD *D > D Dh as in Cao Bang) systems from an earlier *T *ˀD *D which fits better with the distributional evidence, the lack of **ˀb (> *w or *m?), and Winter's Law (and the other phenomena that the Leiden School have catalogued, although I think bringing in vestjysk stød is a little silly - Germanic glottalic phenomena in general, really, since there's no shortage of glottalic phenomena in Finno-Samic and they spread easily enough to make it to Scots Gaelic) what's the advantage of projecting the *T *D *Dh system back to PIE proper?

Admittedly, Greek seems to need *T *D *Dh as an intermediate stage no matter what, but it could've been an areal change that spread outside the zone of its typological preconditions.

It's always seemed to me to make a lot of sense that there was something close to the traditional reconstruction at breakup but that this had evolved fairly recently from something more like the glottalic model, explaining why some of the constraints on the *D series look like those which might be expected for ejectives.

Of course PIE presumably had some dialectal variation and the exact phonation types of these series may not have been the same everywhere.

Yeah, I'd just say "probably after in some subgroups" instead of "at".

[bradrn]

Admittedly, Greek seems to need *T *D *Dh as an intermediate stage no matter what

Why?

[Nortaneous]

Admittedly, Greek seems to need *T *D *Dh as an intermediate stage no matter what

Why?

The PIE fortis series is reflected as T, the PIE marked series is reflected as D, and the PIE lenis series is reflected as Th. How do you get Th out of the lenis series if not by *D > *Dh > Th?

Maybe this is where Madurese could come in. Stevens 1966 says "the voiceless but brathy Javanese b will be heard by Madurese as their voiceless aspirated bh" (Madurese has loaned extensively from Javanese), so maybe there was a Javanese-like stiff/slack voice contrast? I don't really understand what these labels mean or the phonetics and featural analyses of phonation well enough for this to be anything but symbol manipulation though. Phonation is hard and it seems like everyone sort of gives up and uses vague cover symbols.

Has anyone tried, like, asking a theory of phonation specialist about this stuff? Have they ever written about it? How much cross-pollination is there between historical linguistics and phonetic theory?

[bradrn]

Admittedly, Greek seems to need *T *D *Dh as an intermediate stage no matter what

Why?

The PIE fortis series is reflected as T, the PIE marked series is reflected as D, and the PIE lenis series is reflected as Th. How do you get Th out of the lenis series if not by *D > *Dh > Th?

Makes sense. (I was asking only because I know nothing about Greek.)

[WeepingElf]

I don't know whether drawing on various Southeast Asian languages in this debate is a good idea. I mean, each region of the world has its own "phonetic flavour": some classes of sounds are more common in some regions and rare in others. Of course, we don't know much about the "phonetic flavour" of eastern Europe 5,000 years ago.

[Nortaneous]

I don't know whether drawing on various Southeast Asian languages in this debate is a good idea. I mean, each region of the world has its own "phonetic flavour": some classes of sounds are more common in some regions and rare in others. Of course, we don't know much about the "phonetic flavour" of eastern Europe 5,000 years ago.

Given the wide range of allophonic phonation effects attested in English dialects (including both ejectives and implosives) I wouldn't worry too much about phonetic flavor. And in principle you have to take a panchronic approach anyway.

[WeepingElf]

On a different subject: It has been objected against reconstructed languages that different parts of the reconstruction may belong to different dialects and time stages. And this seems indeed to be the case with PIE: the phonology appears to belong to a time stage before the separation of Anatolian (since it accounts for the Anatolian phonological developments easily), but the morphology appears to belong to a time stage after that (since it doesn't account for the Anatolian morphological developments equally easily).

[bradrn]

I don't know whether drawing on various Southeast Asian languages in this debate is a good idea. I mean, each region of the world has its own "phonetic flavour": some classes of sounds are more common in some regions and rare in others. Of course, we don't know much about the "phonetic flavour" of eastern Europe 5,000 years ago.

Given the wide range of allophonic phonation effects attested in English dialects (including both ejectives and implosives) I wouldn't worry too much about phonetic flavor. And in principle you have to take a panchronic approach anyway.

Ejectives, yes, easily, I have them in my own speech on occasion, but implosives‽

[Nortaneous]

I don't know whether drawing on various Southeast Asian languages in this debate is a good idea. I mean, each region of the world has its own "phonetic flavour": some classes of sounds are more common in some regions and rare in others. Of course, we don't know much about the "phonetic flavour" of eastern Europe 5,000 years ago.

Given the wide range of allophonic phonation effects attested in English dialects (including both ejectives and implosives) I wouldn't worry too much about phonetic flavor. And in principle you have to take a panchronic approach anyway.

Ejectives, yes, easily, I have them in my own speech on occasion, but implosives‽

Allophones of voiced stops immediately preceding a stressed syllable in some AmEng varieties. See here - sounds to me like [ɗˠɜj] 'day', [ɓˠɪ̟ɹz̺] 'beers'.

[hwhatting]

On a different subject: It has been objected against reconstructed languages that different parts of the reconstruction may belong to different dialects and time stages. And this seems indeed to be the case with PIE: the phonology appears to belong to a time stage before the separation of Anatolian (since it accounts for the Anatolian phonological developments easily), but the morphology appears to belong to a time stage after that (since it doesn't account for the Anatolian morphological developments equally easily).

This is not a problem with reconstructed languages per se, it's a problem with the current state of PIE reconstruction. The models taught in the introductions I know are still basically the old Brugmannian model with laryngeals bolted on. For the phonology, many scholars just content themselves with using (say) p b bh as cover symbols from which they derive the descendants, without thinking too much on what they stand for; all the discussions on glottalic theory, Cao Bang, how many vowels PIE actually had and their quality, etc. happen only in a (although important) corner of the field. If you look at, say, Kloekhorst's reconstructions based on Anatolian, you see deviations from the traditional model, but if you just want to etymologize this or that word in the language family you specialised in, you can ignore all that and just use traditional notation.
That fudge doesn't work with morphology. But the point is here that there is no consensus on what should replace the traditional Brugmannian model. Some (like the Freiburg school) keep a Greco-Aryan model (with e.g. a tripartite present-aorist-perfect split, an eight-case-system, three genders, etc.) that is very close to the traditional model, others are much more radical, like Winfried Lehmann, or Roland Pooth. But even here, if you're not working on Anatolian or Tocharian, and if you implicitly assume that there was a clean branching-off of Anatolian and Tocharian, you can just assume that rest-PIE had the traditional Brugmannian / Greco-Aryan model and use that as a starting point (that approach has its problems, and I've seen good attempts at solving some puzzles in individual families by moving away from the traditional model). And as there is no new consensus on what PIE morphology looked like, the introductions teach something close to the traditional model with mentions of discussions and problems.
This is what gives the picture you mention - the reconstructed phonology looks fine, because the notation fudges the issues, while the fudge is not possible for the morphology, and there is no consensus (or rather, the consensus on the morphology would show much smaller reconstructed paradigms, with a lot of holes, and only a small number of generally recognised grammatical categories expressed in the morphology) - so what is shown is an obsolete model that, if at all, probably only applied to a later stage in PIE after Anatolian and Tocharian split off.

[WeepingElf]

Perhaps Pre-Anatolian and Post-Anatolian PIE had structurally equivalent phonologies, though the phonetic values of the phonemes changed. Or we are dealing with two IE dialects, one ancestral to Anatolian and one ancestral to the rest, staying in contact with each other for several centuries, that drifted asunder in morphology but stayed together in phonology; for some reason, the dialect boundary was more passable for phonological than for morphological innovations. Hmm, not very likely.

But Hans-Werner's idea of a "fudged" PIE phonology makes sense. Reconstructed phonologies may be "fudged" more easily than reconstructed morphologies; and the structure of the phonology is easier to reconstruct than the phonetic values of the phonemes. Just look at the various alternative stop systems we are discussing here: all of them agree on having three types of stops in PIE, none has two or four or any other number - because the data give clear evidence of exactly three types of stops. Yet, we cannot say for sure what these stop types were like.

[Nortaneous]

Just look at the various alternative stop systems we are discussing here: all of them agree on having three types of stops in PIE, none has two or four or any other number - because the data give clear evidence of exactly three types of stops.

The data give clear evidence of a system that became three types of stops in all descendants, but enough internal reconstruction could probably unify *T and *Dh. But how reconcilable are Lubotsky's correlation of *T and *Dh roots with the accent (the 'Yabem theory') and Zhivlov's comparison of *T and *Dh roots with Uralic back and front harmony? It seems like it ought to be one or the other, not both.

(Couldn't front vowels voice surrounding consonants in Turkic or something like that?)