# Velar Plosive palatalization with no front vowels



## Coatdumid

Hi, I was wondering about a question that I have had specifically for French and Arabic, but that I am sure also applies to other languages as well. In French, in addition to the palatalization of [k] and [g] before the front vowels into initially [t͡s] and [d͡ʒ] if I am not mistaken, [ka] and [ga] also palatalized into  [t͡ʃa] and [d͡ʒa] even though [a] is not a front vowel. Similarly, Old Arabic [g] eventually became [d͡ʒ] even when the following vowel was not an _ (in fact, [g] eventually became [d͡ʒ] in all positions regardless if followed by a front vowel, followed by a back vowel, followed by another consonant, geminated, or not followed by anything). I assume that in both cases, the plosives first gained a palatal secondary articulation before then affricating, but I am wondering how that palatalization occured in the first place without a front vowel.

Furthermore, in the case of Arabic, I am wondering why the voiceless counterpart [k] did not undergo palatalization as well in dialects that palatalized the voiced plosive (at least, in the dialect that would form the basis of what is now considered standard literary Arabic pronunciation); and in the case of French, I am wondering why the back and front vowel palatalizations had a different outcome for the voiceless plosive (especially since, if I am not mistaken, the two voiced plosives outcomes were the same)

{If I should have split the questions about French and Arabic into two separate threads, I apologize. I do though in addition to the specific questions about those languages also am wondering about how consonants before back vowels get palatized at all in general}_


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## Sobakus

The answer is illustrated by modern French, where the neutral pronunciation of /k/ is palatalised, with the purely velar allophone appearing only before fully back vowels (it's very obvious when your language has an opposition of those). Thus, should affrication happen, even if it originates specifically before front vowels, it would affect all positions with the exception of the above and become the neutral allophone. Then either the velar allophone eventually becomes a separate phoneme (as in French) or is absorbed into the newly created affricate (as in Arabic).

You seem to have found the threads discussing the other two questions.


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## Gavril

Some speculative thoughts:

In some cases, the motivation for general palatalization of velars (before front and back vowels) may be morphological: if there is a regular and frequent root-vowel alternation between front and back vowels (as in e.g. German _b*i*ndet_ "binds", versus _b*a*nd_ "bound", or e.g. Greek _ph*é*rein_ "to carry, bring" vs. _ph*ó*ros_ "tribute, that which is brought"), then sound-changes conditioned by the front-vowel environment may be extended into back-vowel variants of the same root. This change may then extend even further into words that never a front-vowel counterpart to begin with.

This may be the reason why _g_/_k_ in some branches of Indo-European corresponds to _s_/_z_ (or similar coronal sounds) in other branches, before front and back vowels alike: compare e.g. Greek _*g*ómphos_ "bolt" with Latvian _*z*obs_ "tooth", and English _*h*aulm_ "stalks, stems" (< *_*k*olm_-) vs. Latvian _*s*alms_ "straw". A regular feature of IE morphology is an alternation between -_e_- and -_o_- in the root vowel, as illustrated in the German and Greek examples above.

Since Arabic morphology also involves a large amount of root-vowel alternation (_rajul_ "man" vs. _rijāl _"men", etc.), then perhaps a similar explanation accounts for the widespread change of [g] > [dʒ] in Arabic. However, I don't know enough about Arabic to say whether any of its common vowel-alternations happen between front vowels and back vowels -- if not, then there would be no plausible starting-point for the palatalization of [g] through this process, as there would have been in Indo-European.

As for the question of why the Arabic change did not affect the voiceless stop [k]: given that the process I described involves the generalization of a morphologically-conditioned change into an unconditioned sound change, then it may have been somewhat gradual and less susceptible to the kind of "symmetry" seen in many other sound changes (such as the palatalization of [k]/[g] before front vowels).

In the more specific case of palatalization before "a" (as in French), it may be relevant that some languages/dialects pronounce this letter as a low central vowel [a] (as opposed to the back vowel [ɑ], which is how "a" is pronounced in many other languages). Velar sounds before [a] may be more prone to palatalization than velar sounds that precede true back vowels.


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## ahvalj

Gavril said:


> This may be the reason why _g_/_k_ in some branches of Indo-European corresponds to _s_/_z_ (or similar coronal sounds) in other branches, before front and back vowels alike: compare e.g. Greek _*g*ómphos_ "bolt" with Latvian _*z*obs_ "tooth", and English _*h*aulm_ "stalks, stems" (< *_*k*olm_-) vs. Latvian _*s*alms_ "straw". A regular feature of IE morphology is an alternation between -_e_- and -_o_- in the root vowel, as illustrated in the German and Greek examples above.


This scenario of the origin of the satəm/centum opposition faces various problems: in particular, we would expect a rather random generalization of assibilated or non-assibilated velars in various satəm lineages (e. g. _salms_ in Latvian but **_karimaḥ_ in Sanskrit), which is actually not the case: the vast majority of satemized words is shared among all the branches, and when the assibilation is lacking, it almost always occurs in Baltic/Slavic/Albanian, not in Indo-Iranic, which can't be explained with your scenario.

I personally like the Nostraticist explanation of the origin of Proto-Indo-European velars: Reconstructing IE h2 everywhere to get rid of /a/. Too much? It explains almost everything (and the IE alternation _e/o_ would be younger than the three rows of velars in PIE, i. e. _o_ would have appeared in most cases when this opposition had already developed).


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> This scenario of the origin of the satəm/centum opposition faces various problems: in particular, we would expect a rather random generalization of assibilated or non-assibilated velars in various satəm lineages



I wouldn't expect this, because I don't yet know of any securely documented cases against which to compare the scenario I described: i.e. I don't know of any examples where ablaut alternations (e/o, i/a, etc.) are known to have caused a widespread shift of velar stops to coronal stops.


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## ahvalj

Gavril said:


> I wouldn't expect this, because I don't yet know of any securely documented cases against which to compare the scenario I described: i.e. I don't know of any examples where ablaut alternations (e/o, i/a, etc.) are known to have caused a widespread shift of velar stops to coronal stops.


Don't quite understand your point.


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> Don't quite understand your point.



You said that we would expect a more random distribution of outcomes in the Satem languages if ablaut had been the motivating factor in the shift of *_K_ to *_Š_. I'm not sure that there is a basis for this expectation, unless we have many documented cases of this kind of process (= ablaut causing widespread palatalization via analogy) to compare/contrast this hypothesis with.


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## Nino83

Sobakus said:


> Then either the velar allophone eventually becomes a separate phoneme (as in French)


Probably they were just different phonemes in Old French, because there were some minimal pairs, like _chant_ (< cantus)  and _quant_ (< quandō), pronounced, respectively [ʧãⁿt] and [kãⁿt] in Old French and [ʃɒ̃] and [kɒ̃] in French.


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## merquiades

Coatdumid said:


> Hi, I was wondering about a question that I have had specifically for French and Arabic, but that I am sure also applies to other languages as well. In French, in addition to the palatalization of [k] and [g] before the front vowels into initially [t͡s] and [d͡ʒ] if I am not mistaken, [ka] and [ga] also palatalized into  [t͡ʃa] and [d͡ʒa] even though [a] is not a front vowel.



In French the first stage of [k] and [g] palatalization before [a] showed a yod developing.  This is similar to what is happening in the upper midwest in the US:  /kjæt/ /wiskjænsin/...   The [kj], [gj] then integrated into a sound pronounced in the same frontal area of the mouth where /j/ was pronounced:  [ʧ] and [ʤ].  Later they were devoiced into [ʃ] and [ʒ].  The outcome was not the same as the earlier palatalization firstly because yod is not prononced in the same position as   or [e] which are more towards the front in French; secondly the second palatalization occurred many centuries after the first one when the change had already been completed long ago and was forgotten about. There was no common knowledge of a link between the two. Actually the first palatalization occurred in Vulgar Latin and affected all Western Romance languages, the second occurred when old French had developed into a language.


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## Sobakus

Nino83 said:


> Probably they were just different phonemes in Old French, because there were some minimal pairs, like _chant_ (< cantus)  and _quant_ (< quandō), pronounced, respectively [ʧãⁿt] and [kãⁿt] in Old French and [ʃɒ̃] and [kɒ̃] in French.


Is there any reason to assume that /qu/ was already delabialised at that point? Or are you saying /ko/ was labialised instead?


merquiades said:


> In French the first stage of [k] and [g] palatalization before [a] showed a yod developing.  This is similar to what is happening in the upper midwest in the US:  /kjat/ /wiskjansin/...


Are you sure you aren't talking about breaking [ɛ~æ] into [eæ] (which is the first necessary step any way)? Can you provide a sound sample?


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## merquiades

Sobakus said:


> Are you sure you aren't talking about breaking [æ] into [eæ] (which is the first necessary step any way)? Can you provide a sound sample?


 No, this only comes from my observation travelling throughout the region.  The [kj] is strong in some speakers.  I don't know if it is linked to the vowel change but it is true I didn't notice it in other phonemic environments.  Yes perhaps when the vowel breaks a yod forms?

@Sobakus minute 5:38


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## Nino83

Sobakus said:


> Is there any reason to assume that /qu/ was already delabialised at that point?


Yes, because there were two alternative spellings in Old French, _quant_ and _qant_.


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## Sobakus

merquiades said:


> No, this only comes from my observation travelling throughout the region.  The [kj] is strong in some speakers.  I don't know if it is linked to the vowel change but it is true I didn't notice it in other phonemic environments.  Yes perhaps when the vowel breaks a yod forms?


[eæ] is the stereotypical Valley girl pronunciation of _man_ or _cat_, for instance – but I don't think I've ever encountered a real yod in either word.


Nino83 said:


> Yes, because there were two alternative spellings in Old French, _quant_ and _qant_.


Are you saying there should have been a palatalised/velarised distinction before affrication? It would seem more probable that affrication happen first to free the phonemic space for delabialisation.


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## Nino83

Sobakus said:


> Are you saying there should have been a palatalised/velarised distinction before affrication?


I'm only saying that [ʧa] and [ka] where just two different phonemes in Old French (due to the change /ka/ < /kwa/). I don't know which change happened before, but they are both very old (they are present in various Romance languages in Northern Italy, mostly Raetho-Romance ones).


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## Sobakus

Nino83 said:


> I'm only saying that [ʧa] and [ka] where just two different phonemes in Old French (due to the change /ka/ < /kwa/). I don't know which change happened before, but they are both very old (they are present in various Romance languages in Northern Italy, mostly Raetho-Romance ones).


But this thread discusses how exactly this [ʧa] came about, and it's rather obvious that they were two different phonemes because only one of them affricated. I simply said that the affrication produced a phonemic split of what was earlier one phoneme, and don't really understand how your comment adds to or subtracts from this, especially if you say you don't know whether the phoneme was already there or not.


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## Nino83

Sobakus said:


> But this thread discusses how exactly this [ʧa] came about


About this matter, I partially agree with Gavril on the fact that it happened before /a/ and not before back vowels, because in French /a/ is a central vowel (not a back one).
Anyway, in Friulan we have both _cjase_ [cazə] (< _casa_) and _cjosse_ [cɔsə] (< cosa), i.e palatalization happened both before central and back vowels.
http://stel.ub.edu/labfon/amper/friul/images/finco_2009.pdf


Sobakus said:


> simply said that the affrication produced a phonemic split of what was earlier one phoneme


And I agree with you.


Sobakus said:


> especially if you say you don't know whether the phoneme was already there or not


I don't know if affrication happened before delabialization, but it's sure that there were both _chant_ [cãⁿt] (palatalized but not just affricated) and [kãⁿt] (velar, delabialized) in the same period.


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## ahvalj

Gavril said:


> You said that we would expect a more random distribution of outcomes in the Satem languages if ablaut had been the motivating factor in the shift of *_K_ to *_Š_. I'm not sure that there is a basis for this expectation, unless we have many documented cases of this kind of process (ablaut causing general palatalization) to compare/contrast this hypothesis with.


Didn't you mean exactly that when writing:



Gavril said:


> In some cases, the motivation for general palatalization of velars (before front and back vowels) may be morphological: if there is a regular and frequent root-vowel alternation between front and back vowels […] then sound-changes conditioned by the front-vowel environment may be extended into back-vowel variants of the same root. This change may then extend even further into words that never a front-vowel counterpart to begin with.



?

Of course, the generalization must work to both sides, i. e. the palatalized variants should eventually appear before non-front vowels and vice versa (cp. the Sanskrit _k/c_).


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> Didn't you mean exactly that when writing:



I'm not sure what you mean. To simplify: I stated that maybe "X" is true. You responded that "X" is unlikely to be true, because then we would expect "Y". I responded by questioning whether we should necessarily expect "Y" in this situation: are there well-established cases of "X" in which "Y" has also occurred?



> Of course, the generalization must work to both sides, i. e. the palatalized variants should eventually appear before non-front vowels and vice versa (cp. the Sanskrit _k/c_).



That seems consistent with what we see in IE, if I understand you correctly:

- English _hear, _Greek _akoúein_, etc. beside Slavic _ču-, čuti_ "feel" (< *_*k*eu_-)
- Greek _gemízein_ "to fill, to pack full", beside Slavic _žьm-_, _žęti _"to press" (< *_*g*em_-)
etc.

These can be interpreted as cases where the back-vowel variant (k/g/gh) of a velar consonant was generalized to front-vowel environments in the Satem languages.


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## ahvalj

Gavril said:


> I'm not sure what you mean. To simplify: I stated that maybe "X" is true. You responded that "X" is unlikely to be true, because then we would expect "Y". I responded by questioning whether we should necessarily expect "Y" in this situation: are there well-established cases of "X" in which "Y" has also occurred?


That is too complicated for me to understand.



Gavril said:


> That seems consistent with what we see in IE, if I understand you correctly:
> 
> - English _hear, _Greek _akoúein_, etc. beside Slavic _ču-, čuti_ "feel" (< *_*k*eu_-)
> - Greek _gemízein_ "to fill, to pack full", beside Slavic _žьm-_, _žęti _"to press" (< *_*g*em_-)
> etc.
> 
> These can be interpreted as cases where the back-vowel variant (k/g/gh) of a velar consonant was generalized to front-vowel environments in the Satem languages.



A second attempt. Haven't you thought why for 150 years nobody has found this simple explanation? This scenario implies the existence of a pool of _satəm_ dialects that were so closely interrelated that they managed to generalize virtually all the velars in the same direction: some velars became palatalized in all _satəm_ languages regardless of the following sound, others became/remained non-palatalized. Such a pool of dialects (or still an undivided original dialect) should exhibit other striking shared innovations, which are, dare I say, absent.


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> This scenario implies the existence of a pool of _satəm_ dialects that were so closely interrelated that they managed to generalize virtually all the velars in the same direction: some velars became palatalized in all _satəm_ languages regardless of the following sound, others became/remained non-palatalized.



Palatalization of IE velars is not very common before a consonant or a non-ablauting vowel like *_a _(though it does sometimes happen).

E.g. there are a few examples of palatalization before -_a_-, like German _*H*ase_ : Old Prussian _*s*asins_ "rabbit", but the correspondence seen in Latin _*c*apio_ : Albanian _*k*ap _"I take" is the normal one_._



> Such a pool of dialects (or still an undivided original dialect) should exhibit other striking shared innovations, which are, dare I say, absent.



Such as?


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## Delvo

Coatdumid said:


> I am wondering how that palatalization occured in the first place without a front vowel.


I don't know of any real authority saying anything about this, but, at least in Arabic, it looks like part of a larger pattern that can be seen in some of the letters that were created by adding a dot above an old letter and the phonetic wandering of ق:

ح to خ: /ħ,ʜ/→/x,χ/; epiglottal-or-pharyngeal to uvular-or-velar

ع to غ: /ʢ,ʕ/→/ʁ,ɣ/; epiglottal-or-pharyngeal to uvular-or-velar

ق: /q/→/ɢ/→/g/; uvular to velar (with unvoiced→voiced first; also sometimes a fricative in some dialects)

ج: /g/ → /dʒ/; velar to palatal

The general trend there is upward & forward. I can't say it's a chain effect, where either the velar moved into the empty palatal spot first and the others followed it to fill in the new empty spots, or the throaty sounds started spreading up and pushed the others forward ahead of them, or neither exactly, but, whatever the details are, it looks like the explanation for what happened to ج did not affect just ج alone, and the other letters it would involve aren't ك .

There is a similar theory about Proto-Indo-European velars and quasi-velars, that what we now call the "velars" might originally have been uvular, while the "palato-velars" were just velar, in which case the centum-satem split was defined by how the original velar group, later known as "palato-velars", responded to the encroachment when the uvulars shifted to velar. Those that allowed the merge at the velar position became centum, while those that allowed the original uvulars to push the original velars forward to palatal became satem. Whether this is correct or not, at least the fact that it was proposed and taken seriously by the pros gives me hope that I'm not completely insane for thinking a comparable group phenomenon was at work in Arabic.



Coatdumid said:


> Furthermore, in the case of Arabic, I am wondering why the voiceless counterpart [k] did not undergo palatalization as well in dialects that palatalized the voiced plosive





Gavril said:


> s for the question of why the Arabic change did not affect the voiceless stop [k]: given that the process I described involves the generalization of a morphologically-conditioned change into an unconditioned sound change, then it may have been somewhat gradual and less susceptible to the kind of "symmetry" seen in many other sound changes (such as the palatalization of [k]/[g] before front vowels).


Arabic has historically not been as symmetric about voicing in general as Indo-European speakers might expect. For one thing, /p/ became /f/ but /b/ didn't become /v/. It also originally (before the new-dot letters) had /tˤ/ (ط), /sˤ/ (ص), and /ʃ/ (ش) but no /dˤ/, /zˤ/, or /ʒ/, and no counterpart for ق regardless of whether you consider it originally voiced or unvoiced (which might be why it's been free to switch sides). Then, when the three alveolar plosives (د-ت-ط) started splitting to create the dental fricatives (ذ-ث-ظ), the asymmetry continued: there was no counterpart for ظ (/θˤ/ but no /ðˤ/), and the general shortage of similar voiced sounds have since then allowed that letter and ض to wander loosely from /θˤ/ to /ðˤ/ and between /ðˤ/ and /zˤ/, so at least a few sounds in that area still always lack voiced/unvoiced counterparts in every dialect, even if they don't all agree on which ones.

Not only does that show a general weakness in voiced/unvoiced symmetry in Arabic in general, but it also just showed me a possibly significant difference I hadn't thought of before myself, between the g→j shift and a hypothetical k→č shift that didn't happen. A velar plosive becoming a palatal affricate is two out of three steps toward becoming a palatal fricative, and there was already a /ʃ/ (ش) but no /ʒ/. So ش could have been blocking ك from coming too close, whereas /ʒ/ was just a conspicuously empty spot, offering no push-back to keep ج at a distance.


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## ahvalj

Gavril said:


> Palatalization of IE velars is not very common before a consonant or a non-ablauting vowel like *_a _(though it does sometimes happen).
> 
> E.g. there are a few examples of palatalization before -_a_-, like German _*H*ase_ : Old Prussian _*s*asins_ "rabbit", but the correspondence seen in Latin _*c*apio_ : Albanian _*k*ap _"I take" is the normal one_._


I don't see what these examples should explain when your original idea is flawed.

Sorry, I have no more to say on this subject. Perhaps I shouldn't have replied to your original comment.


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## Erkattäññe

I agree with Gavril on the centum - satem stuff

There were just 2 set of velars in PIE, velars and labiovelars
In the satem languages "classic reconstructed" palatovelars and velars are mostly in complementary distribution, this has been demonstrated, check authors like Kortlandt for example.

1) In PIE the two sets of velars neutralize after /s/ and /u/

2) In satem languages velars palatalize before /e/,/i/,/y/ and resonants followed by front vowels except for /r/, this happen before /e/ gets coloured by h2 or h3 (/e/ doesn't necessarily gets coloured in IIr. at least when the laryngeal precedes it)

3) In satem languages velars never palatalize before /r/ and /H/, obstruents and syllabic resonants except for /m/ and possibly after /n/ (my rule, check PIE roots ending in -nK where those Ks are mostly reconstructed as plain velars.)

4) In ablaut paterns palatalization generalizes from 'e' over 'o' and 'zero' grades because 'e' grade is dominant in frequency, this happen almost completely in Indoiranian because of the vowel merger but sometimes fails in other satem languages where the outcomes of PIE /e/ and /o/ remain distinct. (So called centum reflexes in Baltoslavic, also common in Albanian)

5) Following these rules a few counterexamples remain but that is because some /e/ grade forms are lost from the available register.
Eg: Skr. smas'ru besides Lith. smakras can be explained as old /r-n/ stems like hittite pahhur - pahhuenas where the obliques would trigger palatalization, or Lith. peku - Skr pas'u explained as baltic generalizing the nominative while IIr generalizing the palatalization from the oblique forms as *pekéus or *pekués both triggering palatalization, for palatalization in "eight" IIr has the form _aśītí- _showing a possible source of palatalization lost in the other forms, etc.


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## ahvalj

I can only repeat that this has been discussed by hundreds of authors in the last 150 years and many of them believed they had found a final solution.

Unlike other sound correspondences postulated for late PIE, when we can generally take the material of the daughter lineages and come to a consistent and convincing prototype, the evidence of the velars doesn't converge to an unambiguous picture. If the palatal row is secondary, it must have arisen within PIE, before the stage we can reconstruct. Even for practical purposes: if we leave only two sets of velars for PIE, we lose the possibility to predict the shape of the outcomes in the satəm languages, since in some cases we will find the palatalized lemmata, and in others — those with plain velars. I think this is the problem that cannot be resolved with the evidence we possess — and it is wise to leave it as such until something relevant and important is discovered.

*P. S. *By the way, there were attempts to explain the secondary origin of the _labialized_ velars using largely the same approach: positional labialization before _o, u_ and _u̯_ and later generalization of either plain or labialized variant. And, of course, the same scenario can be applied to explain the origin of both labialized and palatalized sets at the same time. The issues remain the same: (1) one can't prove this had happened after the split of Proto-Indo-European, and (2) this makes the reconstructed forms awkward since one cannot predict from their shape  the outcomes in the daughter lineages.


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## Ihsiin

Delvo said:


> I don't know of any real authority saying anything about this, but, at least in Arabic, it looks like part of a larger pattern that can be seen in some of the letters that were created by adding a dot above an old letter and the phonetic wandering of ق:
> 
> ح to خ: /ħ,ʜ/→/x,χ/; epiglottal-or-pharyngeal to uvular-or-velar
> 
> ع to غ: /ʢ,ʕ/→/ʁ,ɣ/; epiglottal-or-pharyngeal to uvular-or-velar
> 
> ق: /q/→/ɢ/→/g/; uvular to velar (with unvoiced→voiced first; also sometimes a fricative in some dialects)
> 
> ج: /g/ → /dʒ/; velar to palatal
> 
> The general trend there is upward & forward. I can't say it's a chain effect, where either the velar moved into the empty palatal spot first and the others followed it to fill in the new empty spots, or the throaty sounds started spreading up and pushed the others forward ahead of them, or neither exactly, but, whatever the details are, it looks like the explanation for what happened to ج did not affect just ج alone, and the other letters it would involve aren't ك .
> 
> There is a similar theory about Proto-Indo-European velars and quasi-velars, that what we now call the "velars" might originally have been uvular, while the "palato-velars" were just velar, in which case the centum-satem split was defined by how the original velar group, later known as "palato-velars", responded to the encroachment when the uvulars shifted to velar. Those that allowed the merge at the velar position became centum, while those that allowed the original uvulars to push the original velars forward to palatal became satem. Whether this is correct or not, at least the fact that it was proposed and taken seriously by the pros gives me hope that I'm not completely insane for thinking a comparable group phenomenon was at work in Arabic.
> 
> Arabic has historically not been as symmetric about voicing in general as Indo-European speakers might expect. For one thing, /p/ became /f/ but /b/ didn't become /v/. It also originally (before the new-dot letters) had /tˤ/ (ط), /sˤ/ (ص), and /ʃ/ (ش) but no /dˤ/, /zˤ/, or /ʒ/, and no counterpart for ق regardless of whether you consider it originally voiced or unvoiced (which might be why it's been free to switch sides). Then, when the three alveolar plosives (د-ت-ط) started splitting to create the dental fricatives (ذ-ث-ظ), the asymmetry continued: there was no counterpart for ظ (/θˤ/ but no /ðˤ/), and the general shortage of similar voiced sounds have since then allowed that letter and ض to wander loosely from /θˤ/ to /ðˤ/ and between /ðˤ/ and /zˤ/, so at least a few sounds in that area still always lack voiced/unvoiced counterparts in every dialect, even if they don't all agree on which ones.
> 
> Not only does that show a general weakness in voiced/unvoiced symmetry in Arabic in general, but it also just showed me a possibly significant difference I hadn't thought of before myself, between the g→j shift and a hypothetical k→č shift that didn't happen. A velar plosive becoming a palatal affricate is two out of three steps toward becoming a palatal fricative, and there was already a /ʃ/ (ش) but no /ʒ/. So ش could have been blocking ك from coming too close, whereas /ʒ/ was just a conspicuously empty spot, offering no push-back to keep ج at a distance.



You mustn't confuse Arabic orthography with Arabic phonology. The letters خ, غ, ث, ذ, ض and ظ are all distinct phonemes from proto-Semitic through to Arabic - they are not variations that split off from other phonemes. They appear in Arabic orthography as dotted versions of other letters because they are all phonemes which were lost in Phoenician, which is where the Arabic script originally comes from, so the same glyph was used to denote more than one phoneme, later being disambiguated by dots. Concerning voicing, it is posited that the proto-Semitic emphatics were realised with glottalisation, which would inhibit voicing, and as such we find no voiced-voiceless pairs amongst the emphatics in any Semitic language. Richard Steiner suggested a system of triads following the pattern voiced-voiceless-emphatic, but as there are only four complete triads in proto-Semitic (could we also mess around with _š_, _ś_ and _ṣ́_? It seems unlikely), this only yields 12 out of 29 phonemes.

I should also point out that ك _is _palatalised in a number of Arabic dialects, as is ق. This has been discussed in several previous threads before now.


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## Erkattäññe

ahvalj said:


> I can only repeat that this has been discussed by hundreds of authors in the last 150 years and many of them believed they had found a final solution.
> 
> *P. S. *By the way, there were attempts to explain the secondary origin of the _labialized_ velars using largely the same approach: positional labialization before _o, u_ and _u̯_ and later generalization of either plain or labialized variant. And, of course, the same scenario can be applied to explain the origin of both labialized and palatalized sets at the same time. The issues remain the same: (1) one can't prove this had happened after the split of Proto-Indo-European, and (2) this makes the reconstructed forms awkward since one cannot predict from their shape  the outcomes in the daughter lineages.



I don't think positing labialization and generalization before o, u and u̯ for labiovelars is equivalent to the rules I exposed above to explain satemization, that phonological context is narrow in comparison with palatalizing contexts where /e/ is the unmarked grade in ablaut. 
I'm quite prudent about labiovelars because I cannot explain their origin given the evidence so I reconstruct them for PIE as labiovelars, but with the palatovelars I can derive them easily by phonological context 99% of the time. That is predictive power. 

Off course we cannot predict what piece of lexicon will generalize an 'o' or 'zero' grade in a given satem language and that corresponds to the history of each branch itself and that uncertainity is the equivalent of the contradictions we find among satem languages, check the work of Ĉekman about gutturalwechsel, he finds 70 cases of alternances of velar / palatals for the same roots among the satem languages.
That original distribution can be as well efaded by successive developments, in baltic we have many /a/ vowels coming from /e/, compare Slovenian "veĉer" with Lithuanian "vakaras" so we might find unespected palatalization before /a/ aside generalization from ablaut.

I'm not trying to convince anyone, just providing evidence which for me is conclusive about this matter, even in works as Rix's 
"Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben" which follows the traditional three velar rows model we can see that in most roots starting with reconstructed plain velars the oclusive is followed by /r/ and the cases that the oclusive is followed directly by /e/ are very few and thus the velar in the satem languages can be explained by prevalence of 'o' and 'zero' grades and that is what the evidence shows us in those branches.


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## Erkattäññe

Sobakus said:


> [eæ] is the stereotypical Valley girl pronunciation of _man_ or _cat_, for instance – but I don't think I've ever encountered a real yod in either word.
> 
> Are you saying there should have been a palatalised/velarised distinction before affrication? It would seem more probable that affrication happen first to free the phonemic space for delabialisation.





Nino83 said:


> I'm only saying that [ʧa] and [ka] where just two different phonemes in Old French (due to the change /ka/ < /kwa/). I don't know which change happened before, but they are both very old (they are present in various Romance languages in Northern Italy, mostly Raetho-Romance ones).



I think old french second palatalization was kind of a chain shift, we need labialization in what was spelled either "qua" or "qa" because it remained distinct from "ca"

I guess we could formulate this changes for the series:

1)  General latin delabialization of labiovelars before /o/ leading to /Ka/; /Ke/; /Ki/; Ko/; /Ku/ but only /kwa/; /kwe/; /kwi/ (mostly unvoiced)

2)  General palatalization of velars before front vowels but labiovelars not affected at least in galloromance (we need them for second palatalization) thus the velar combinations result in just /Ka/; /Ko/, /Ku/ and /kwa/; /kwe/; /kwi/ (mostly unvoiced)

3)  Latter great influx of words from germanic origin restoring /Ke/ and /Ki/ and providing a considerable amount of voiced /gwa/; /gwe/; /gwi/ from germanic words starting with /w/ so the system now is /Ka/; /Ke/; /Ki/; Ko/; /Ku/ but only /Kwa/; /Kwe/; /Kwi/ both series voiced and unvoiced

4) Now we have *many new labiovelars*, voiced and unvoiced and they contrast with plain velars only when an */a/*, /e/ and /i/ is followed but /Ko/ and /Ku/ are isolated without labiovelar counterparts

5) Now the chain /kʷ/ > /k/ > /t͡ʃ/ and /gʷ/ > /g/ > /d͡ʒ/ if _/a/;/e/;/i/ but velars before back vowels and consonants remain unchanged because their isolation in the system as they didn't contrast with inherited and recent labiovelars.


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## Gavril

I would agree that it is more cautious to leave three reconstructed velar/uvular series for IE than to try collapsing them into two. But this in no way means that we have to reconstruct palatalized velars (*kj) as one of these series: e.g. instead of a palatal-vs.-velar contrast, we could reconstruct a velar-vs.-uvular contrast.

The most conservative solution, in the sense of not positing anything that isn't attested, might be to leave the precise quality of these velars indeterminate (*k1, *k2) pending further evidence.

Regardless of how many series we reconstruct, ablaut remains a possible mechanism for the palatalization of earlier velars in Indo-Iranian/Baltic/etc.

As far as labiovelars are concerned, the reconstruction of *kw seems less problematic than that of *kj because 1) labiovelars are directly attested in many IE languages, and 2) labiovelars don't bring the same typological problems that *kj does. There are many attested languages that have labialized velars (English _quell_, _quern_, etc.) while having few or no examples of other labialized sounds. By contrast, what languages are there that have many palatalized velar stops, but no palatalized alveolars or labials? Maybe Egyptian Arabic qualifies, but if I'm not mistaken only its voiced velars are palatalized, not its voiceless ones.


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## Swatters

Erkattäññe said:


> I think old french second palatalization was kind of a chain shift



Not necessarily, Picard delabialised /kwa/ and merged it with /ka/ without palatalising either of them, while Walloon affricated /ka/ to /t͡ʃa/ while preserving /kwa/ as is to this day. That would indicate two subsequent rather than simultaneous changes that spread differently through the dialect continuum.

I remember reading an article that speculated that the most important factor for the second French palatalisation was [-rounding], so that if the velar was rounded, either intrinsically or by a following vowel, it kept its velar point of articulation, while unrounded velars were unconditionally palatalised. It sounded plausible enough, at least for the monophthongs, but I don't know how well it fits for the diphthongs nor how they are thought to have been realised at the time of the palatalisation.


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## Erkattäññe

Swatters said:


> Not necessarily, Picard delabialised /kwa/ and merged it with /ka/ without palatalising either of them, while Walloon affricated /ka/ to /t͡ʃa/ while preserving /kwa/ as is to this day. That would indicate two subsequent rather than simultaneous changes that spread differently through the dialect continuum.
> 
> I remember reading an article that speculated that the most important factor for the second French palatalisation was [-rounding], so that if the velar was rounded, either intrinsically or by a following vowel, it kept its velar point of articulation, while unrounded velars were unconditionally palatalised. It sounded plausible enough, at least for the monophthongs, but I don't know how well it fits for the diphthongs nor how they are thought to have been realised at the time of the palatalisation.



I think the [-rounding] rule for old french second palatalization is elegant and simple, but the case is that in other contexts such as final or preconsonantal position we do not see palatalization either.
I didn't know about that development in Walloon, it seems to be a typological oddity because the most common sound /k/ was eliminated and the result is 2 marked ones.
It's hard to find information about Walloon on the internet, are you sure that the labiovelar is always retained and, on the other hand, all simple k's were palatalized before /a/? there should be a /k/ residue in the process to balance the consonant system.
I ask this too because in spanish there seems to be a twofold outcomes for latin /kwa/, I have "cuatro", "escualo", "cuando", "cuanto" besides "calidad", "cantidad", "catorce" etc. all from latin /kwa/ 
Perhaps it's a matter of stress in these cases, I didn't read or research this for myself.


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## Swatters

aequa





Erkattäññe said:


> I didn't know about that development in Walloon, it seems to be a typological oddity because the most common sound /k/ was eliminated and the result is 2 marked ones.
> It's hard to find information about Walloon on the internet, are you sure that the labiovelar is always retained and, on the other hand, all simple k's were palatalized before /a/? there should be a /k/ residue in the process to balance the consonant system.
> I ask this too because in spanish there seems to be a twofold outcomes for latin /kwa/, I have "cuatro", "escualo", "cuando", "cuanto" besides "calidad", "cantidad", "catorce" etc. all from latin /kwa/
> Perhaps it's a matter of stress in these cases, I didn't read or research this for myself.



Right, I can't use my intuition for this, my dialect is mostly on the Picard side of this sound change.

The dictionaries I can consult are lacking in etymologies, so it's hard to determine if a word with /ka/, /ki/ or /ke/ related from a Latin etymon with a labiovelar is genuine descendant or a calque or loanword from French (Sometimes it's obvious, like calque _lingaedje _(< Fr. Langage) versus inherited _linwe_ (< Lt lingua, with lenition of the intervocalic stop [gʷ] > [ɣʷ] > [ɰʷ ~w] also found in _aiwe < aqua, èwal_ < _aequālem_, _anwîye _< _anguilla _and so on).

I've found a few words that are very unlikely to have been inherited with a change from /kʷ/ to /k/:

ki < quī (but quem > cwé)
ké < qualis
catoize < quattuordecim (Every other word from quat/d- has kept the labiovelar: cwate, cwarante, cwatrinme, cwarème, etc.)

And one case of /kʷ/ from /k/:

cwåte < carta

Beside these, all words whose etymology I've confirmed conform to the sound changes outlined in my previous post. By now, typological normalcy has been regained from loanwords: all my dictionaries listed more /ka-/ words than /kwa/- words. /ki/- words mostly come from other vowels (mostly /õ/) having weakened to schwa ([ɪ] in Walloon).


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## Erkattäññe

Swatters said:


> aequa
> 
> Right, I can't use my intuition for this, my dialect is mostly on the Picard side of this sound change.
> 
> The dictionaries I can consult are lacking in etymologies, so it's hard to determine if a word with /ka/, /ki/ or /ke/ related from a Latin etymon with a labiovelar is genuine descendant or a calque or loanword from French (Sometimes it's obvious, like calque _lingaedje _(< Fr. Langage) versus inherited _linwe_ (< Lt lingua, with lenition of the intervocalic stop [gʷ] > [ɣʷ] > [ɰʷ ~w] also found in _aiwe < aqua, èwal_ < _aequālem_, _anwîye _< _anguilla _and so on).
> 
> I've found a few words that are very unlikely to have been inherited with a change from /kʷ/ to /k/:
> 
> ki < quī (but quem > cwé)
> ké < qualis
> catoize < quattuordecim (Every other word from quat/d- has kept the labiovelar: cwate, cwarante, cwatrinme, cwarème, etc.)
> 
> And one case of /kʷ/ from /k/:
> 
> cwåte < carta
> 
> Beside these, all words whose etymology I've confirmed conform to the sound changes outlined in my previous post. By now, typological normalcy has been regained from loanwords: all my dictionaries listed more /ka-/ words than /kwa/- words. /ki/- words mostly come from other vowels (mostly /õ/) having weakened to schwa ([ɪ] in Walloon).



Well, I'm quite surprised with Waloon, because it even retains labiovelars before front vowels, something that doesn't even happen in iberian romance, where labiovelars are retained mostly before /a/ only. If we didn't have any register of the latin language and we had to rely only on the phonemic writing of the nowadays romance languages Waloon would be crucial for reconstucting the labiovelars in the parent language.

About typological normalcy, I think that intrusion of large amounts of loanwords can change the overal phonemic system of languages and interfere with the regular phonemic changes that could be happening at that time. I don't know if this has been studied in detail.
When I see a language that loses its velars before front vowels a sort of repair happens over the time and new combinations of velars and front vowels emerge.
Check armenian for example, a lot of new /ge/ emerged from earlier /we/>/gwe/ at the time when original velars were palatalized or italian which created a lot of /ki̯/ from latin /kl/ or even english creating new /ki/ from earlier /ku/>/ky/.


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## ahvalj

How to explain such roots as _*legʰ-_ "to lie (down)", that have no traces of labialization in centum or palatalization in satəm languages? Why _*u̯egʲʰ-_ (Russian _vʲezlá_ "she carried" _<*u̯egʲʰlehₐ,_ _voz_ "carriage" <_*u̯ogʲʰos_) but _legʰ-_ (Russian _lʲeglá_ "she lay down" _<*legʰlehₐ,_ _log_ "ravine" _<*logʰos_)?


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## Erkattäññe

ahvalj said:


> How to explain such roots as _*legʰ-_ "to lie (down)", that have no traces of labialization in centum or palatalization in satəm languages? Why _*u̯egʲʰ-_ (Russian _vʲezlá_ "she carried" _<*u̯egʲʰlehₐ,_ _voz_ "carriage" <_*u̯ogʲʰos_) but _legʰ-_ (Russian _lʲeglá_ "she lay down" _<*legʰlehₐ,_ _log_ "ravine" _<*logʰos_)?



Slavic inherited PIE athematic infixed ne/n conjugation for _*legʰ-_ while simple thematic conjugation for_ *u̯egʲʰ- _(see LIV form Rix) thus the latter root had a palatalizing context while the former didn't (satemization in blocked after PIE /n/ too while not after /m/), Russian and OCS formations are already leveled.
When you don't have a clear phonological motivation in *root codas* such as -uK, -sK, nK, h2K, etc. you can explain most of the distribution of palatovelars and plain velars looking for the kind of nominal and verbal stems projected in the protolanguage and observing if palatal context was prevalent or not.


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## ahvalj

Erkattäññe said:


> Slavic inherited PIE athematic infixed ne/n conjugation for _*legʰ-_ while simple thematic conjugation for_ *u̯egʲʰ- _(see LIV form Rix) thus the latter root had a palatalizing context while the former didn't (satemization in blocked after PIE /n/ too while not after /m/), Russian and OCS formations are already leveled.
> When you don't have a clear phonological motivation in root codas such as -uK, -sK, nK, h2K, etc. you can explain most of the distribution of palatovelars and plain velars in roots looking for the kind of nominal and verbal stems projected in the protolanguage and observing if palatal context was prevalent or not.


I would be glad to see somewhere a comprehensive list of lemmata in satəm languages containing the assibilated and non-assibilated _k, g_ and _gʰ_ with explanations. It would be interesting to learn, in particular, why does the suffix _-k- _(in _-iko-_) remain unassibilated (and, contrary to your expectations, assibilated in the isolated Sanskrit _yuvaśaḥ<ı̯uHn̥kos,_ _juvencus, _after the blocking _n_)_._

The nasal infix at times was popular in the languages (e. g. Lithuanian still has many dozens of Present stems with it, many obviously secondary, e. g. those on _j, v, r, l_), so it can in principle explain virtually any velar-ending root in question. It, however, doesn't predict why some roots inherit the assibilated variant while others don't. For example, this Slavic _*lengʰō_ _(lʲágu)_ "I lie down" exists along with *_legʰı̯ō_ _(lʲežú)_ "I am lying" and *_logʰı̯ō (ložú) _"I lay", the former Present stem being accompanied by others (the Aorist/Infinitive one in attested Slavic, certainly more in earlier periods), yet this single stem with a nasal infix somehow favored the generalization of the non-assibilated variant.

I'd like to repeat one more time: it is not impossible that the three sets of velars in Indo-European languages are secondary, having evolved from two or just one, but I still have to see an explanation convincingly referring the secondary origin of one of these sets (palatovelars in your and gavril's case) to the time after the split of Proto-Indo-European. One can accept that there were environments favoring and blocking palatalization (or only assibilation), but I fail to understand why separate satəm branches tend to generalize the same roots in the same shape. The only plausible explanation would be the existence of a common satəm intermediate language (for a prolonged period: languages lose automatic assibilation during long centuries), but this scenario is not confirmed by a sufficient number of other isoglosses; in particular, why the centum Greek is so obviously close to Indo-Iranic when other ancient centum languages aren't? Balto-Slavic and Albanian are attested too late, while Armenian in the 5th century appears to be already very advanced, so we can't evaluate whether the Indo-Iranic type was present in other satəm languages as well — however, e. g. the Balto-Slavic prosody is very different from the Indo-Iranic and Greek one (accentuation patterns, prosodic influence of laryngeals), and both types seem to be independently derivable from the common PIE stage.

P. S. Sorry for a little nervous original reply: this is a never ending discussion of a blind with a deaf. Changed some accents to make the text more constructive ,-)


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## ahvalj

For _*steg-_ "to cover" (Rix: 589) we have _στέγω : tegō : sthagāmi_ (Sanskrit Dictionary; not mentioned in Rix), a simple thematic conjugation.


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> One can accept that there were environments favoring and blocking palatalization (or only assibilation), but I fail to understand why separate satəm branches tend to generalize the same roots in the same shape. The only plausible explanation would be the existence of a common satəm intermediate language,



You might be right about this, but it's not prima facie obvious. If a group of dialects are in sufficiently heavy contact, and still have a high enough degree of mutual similarity (for example: ablaut still active in each dialect; dialects not too heavily differentiated by sound change; core vocabularies of each dialect remain similar), then it might be possible to transfer this kind of sound change among them without much discrepancy.



> but this scenario is not confirmed by a sufficient number of other isoglosses;



How do we define what a sufficient number is here?

By way of comparison, if I recall correctly, the only sound change that is demonstrably shared between Italic and Celtic is *-_ss_- as the outcome of *_t_/_d/dH_ + *_t _at morpheme boundaries_. _Italic and Celtic share some morphological and lexical isoglosses as well, but the two branches were in contact with each other well into the current era, whereas Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian have been separated for ~3 millennia or more.



> However, the Balto-Slavic prosody is very different from the Indo-Iranic and Greek one (accentuation patterns, prosodic influence of laryngeals), and both types seem to beindependently derivable from the common PIE stage.



Why is it so unlikely/impossible that the IIr. prosodic pattern converged closer to that of Greek via contact -- or that B-Sl.'s prosodic pattern diverged at an early point from something that more closely resembled that of IIr.?


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## Erkattäññe

ahvalj said:


> For _*steg-_ "to cover" (Rix: 589) we have _στέγω : tegō : sthagāmi_ (Sanskrit Dictionary; not mentioned in Rix), a simple thematic conjugation.


_sthagāmi_ is not a reliable counterexample because it's not even affected by the law of palatals on labiovelars and "plain velars". This verb is surely based on a nominal formation, it also has a past participle sthagita whose i vowel cannot go back to a larygeal so this formation is also post PIE. 
There are very few verbs in sanskrit ending in -kati, -gati or -ghati which should be regarded as based on nominals because the lack of palatalization.

PIE labiovelars
*takati* besides avestan tačaiti, based on táku- and takvá-
*laṅghati* besides ráṃhati, based on laghú-, raghú-

PIE palatovelars
*stakati* based on a nominal, cf av. _staxta_- `fest, stark', _staxra_-
*iṅgati* besides éjati
*valgati* based on valgā-
*sthagati* based on a lost nominal in indoiranian
*váṅgati* besides vañcati (centum velar, satem velar with N blocking)
*riṅgati* also riṅkhati (centum velar, satem velar with N blocking)
*laṅgati /raṅgati* based on laṅga- (centum velar, satem velar with N blocking)


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## ahvalj

Erkattäññe said:


> _sthagāmi_ is not a reliable counterexample because it's not even affected by the law of palatals on labiovelars and "plain velars". This verb is surely based on a nominal formation, it also has a past participle sthagita whose i vowel cannot go back to a larygeal so this formation is also post PIE.
> There are very few verbs in sanskrit ending in -kati, -gati or -ghati which should be regarded as based on nominals because the lack of palatalization.
> 
> PIE labiovelars
> *takati* besides avestan tačaiti, based on táku- and takvá-
> *laṅghati* besides ráṃhati, based on laghú-, raghú-
> 
> PIE palatovelars
> *stakati* based on a nominal, cf av. _staxta_- `fest, stark', _staxra_-
> *iṅgati* besides éjati
> *valgati* based on valgā-
> *sthagati* based on a lost nominal in indoiranian
> *váṅgati* besides vañcati (centum velar, satem velar with N blocking)
> *riṅgati* also riṅkhati (centum velar, satem velar with N blocking)
> *laṅgati /raṅgati* based on laṅga- (centum velar, satem velar with N blocking)


_Sthagitaḥ_ is the participle of _sthagayāmi _(Common Germanic _þakiđaz_ from _*þakjō_ — Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/þakjaną - Wiktionary; cp. _vartayāmi — vartitaḥ _: Gothic _fra-wardja_ — _fra-wardiþs_).

It looks like you regard the lack of _c/j/h_-assibilation in Indic as unusual and requiring specific explanations, while you postulate that the results of the satemization could have been leveled to either direction. As far as I imagine, this scenario could be probable only if we admit that this dispalatalization occurred at the velar stage (i. e. _K_ʷ_>K_ early and then some _Kʲ_ joined this _K_).

_Takati_ can be the late thematization of _takti.
Laṅghati _can be the late thematization of _*lanakti, _cp. _anakti. _The same with other infixed forms you mention.

Compare also here Sanskrit Verbal Roots List with English Translation – Yogawiki the roots on _g, gh_ and _k, kh_.


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## ahvalj

Gavril said:


> You might be right about this, but it's not prima facie obvious. If a group of dialects are in sufficiently heavy contact, and still have a high enough degree of mutual similarity (for example: ablaut still active in each dialect; dialects not too heavily differentiated by sound change; core vocabularies of each dialect remain similar), then it might be possible to transfer this kind of sound change among them without much discrepancy.


That is the satisfactory explanation for the spread of a certain phonetic phenomenon (e. g. we know that things happened this way during the penetration of the High German consonant shift to the north), but it can't explain why most roots in various satəm languages have settled in the same form (though I have never seen the stats and would be glad to have a look): if the dispalatalization occurred after the split of Proto-Indo-European, we should be ready to encounter a considerable degree of vacillation, something like _leg-_ in Slavic, but _**rah-_ in Indic.



Gavril said:


> How do we define what a sufficient number is here?


I would ask the contrary question: what are the shared phonetic or morphological innovations of the satəm languages besides the assibilation of palatovelars and the _ruki _rule?



Gavril said:


> By way of comparison, if I recall correctly, the only sound change that is demonstrably shared between Italic and Celtic is *-_ss_- as the outcome of *_t_/_d/dH_ + *_t _at morpheme boundaries_. _Italic and Celtic share some morphological and lexical isoglosses as well, but the two branches were in contact with each other well into the current era, whereas Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian have been separated for ~3 millennia or more.


I don't think Baltic and Slavic (which are contiguous in the 21st century, and in the last centuries a considerable part of the Baltic speakers were Baltic/Slavic bilinguals) were separated more than speakers of Celtic and Italic. Baltic and Slavic even have shared recent innovations, e. g. the palatalization of consonants in Prussian, Lithuanian, Latgalian and (presently or formerly) adjacent Slavic languages.

_Matasović R · 2009 · Etymological dictionary of Proto-Celtic: _11–12


> 1. The development of PIE syllabic resonants followed by laryngeals, PIE *CRHC > *CrāC, cf. PIE *ǵrHno- 'grain' > Lat. _grānum, _PCelt. *grāno-. Note, however, that in PCelt. the development was actually from *CRHC to *CRaHC, and then to *CRāC with loss of the laryngeal and compensatory lengthening of *a (see above, changes A6-A7 in the relative chronology). It is uncertain whether the same two-step development occurred in Italic.
> 
> 2. The assimilation *p...kʷ > *kʷ...kʷ. However, this change appears to be late in Celtic. It failed to occur in Olr. _deac, deëc _'10', which is often derived from *dwey-penkʷ-om 'two-fives', and when this compound was formed (in Proto-Celtic) *p was not in the beginning of the word, and so it regularly changed to *f > ∅ rather than assimilating with *kʷ (see Watkins 1966: 145, but also the lemma *dekan below for problems with this etymology). In any case, such an assimilation is phonetically trivial (cf. the reverse assimilation in PIE *penkʷe '5' > Go. _fimf)._
> 
> 3. The shortening of vowels in pretonic position (Dybo's law mentioned above); however, this change may not be limited to Italic and Celtic, because it appears to affect Germanic as well, at least in some examples, cf. OE _wer _'man' < *wiHró- (Skt. _vīrá-, _Lith. _výras, _Lat. _uir, Olr.fer)._


Yet, don't you think that your mentioning of the vague Italo-Celtic unity doesn't shed light at how the satəm languages have acquired the shared leveling of velars in different roots?



Gavril said:


> Why is it so unlikely/impossible that the IIr. prosodic pattern converged closer to that of Greek via contact -- or that B-Sl.'s prosodic pattern diverged at an early point from something that more closely resembled that of IIr.?


Everything is possible: I was asking about the shared innovations required to justify the existence of a rather uniform common satəm language. Actually, when did this all happen? _"The first (proto-) Greek-speaking tribes are generally thought to have arrived in the Greek mainland between the late 3rd and the first half of the 2nd millennium BC – probably between 1900 and 1600 BC"_ (History of Greece - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). That implies that the convergence of Indo-Iranic and Greek should have occurred to the north of the Black sea during several centuries in the 3rd millennium, let's say, between 2500 and 2000. If we assume that the satəm language existed during some centuries prior to it, we come to the late Proto-Indo-European stage. That's OK, but it returns us to my question whether there is evidence that this shared dispalatalization occurred after the split of Proto-Indo-European.


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> That is the satisfactory explanation for the spread of a certain phonetic phenomenon (e. g. we know that things happened this way during the penetration of the High German consonant shift to the north), but it can't explain why most roots in various satəm languages have settled in the same form (though I have never seen the stats and would be glad to have a look): if the dispalatalization occurred after the split of Proto-Indo-European, we should be ready to encounter a considerable degree of vacillation, something like _leg-_ in Slavic, but _**rah-_ in Indic.



Again, it is not obvious that we should encounter a considerable degree of vacillation under all circumstances. Maybe this would be the usual pattern, but it is not clear that exceptions would not occur from time to time, given sufficient similarity and proximity between dialects.



> I would ask the contrary question: what are the shared phonetic or morphological innovations of the satəm languages besides the assibilation of palatovelars and the _ruki _rule?



I don't know of any others off the top of my head, but I would repeat my earlier question to you -- what is a "sufficient number" of shared innovations? -- because the answer seems important to the claim that a proto-satem language is improbable/unlikely.



> I don't think Baltic and Slavic (which are contiguous in the 21st century, and in the last centuries a considerable part of the Baltic speakers were Baltic/Slavic bilinguals) were separated more than speakers of Celtic and Italic.



Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but I was talking about Baltic/Slavic being separated from Indo-Iranian, not the split between Baltic and Slavic.



> That implies that the convergence of Indo-Iranic and Greek should have occurred to the north of the Black sea during several centuries in the 3rd millennium, let's say, between 2500 and 2000. If we assume that the satəm language existed during some centuries prior to it, we come to the late Proto-Indo-European stage. That's OK, but it returns us to my question whether there is evidence that this shared dispalatalization occurred after the split of Proto-Indo-European.



Do you mean "shared palatalization", i.e. *K>*Š?

My contention is that it is unlikely for *K>*Š to precede the split of PIE, because that scenario seems to require the reconstruction of palatalized velars (*Kj) in almost all phonetic environments (not just before front vowels), which is typologically questionable, since these velars would not (according to what we can reconstruct) have co-existed with any other palatalized consonants, only with the palatal glide [j].

Since ablaut is a plausible alternative explanation (though perhaps not the only one) of the *K>*Š shift, then it is preferable to explanations that date the palatalization of *K to the period before the kentum languages split off.


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## ahvalj

Gavril said:


> I don't know of any others off the top of my head, but I would repeat my earlier question to you -- what is a "sufficient number" of shared innovations? -- because the answer seems important to the claim that a proto-satem language is improbable/unlikely.


Let's continue with the verbs.

Indo-Iranic, like Greek and Latin, has thematic causatives/intensives (_*uorteı̯e-_ > Indic _vartaya-,_ Latin _moneō<*moneı̯ō, monēs <*moneı̯esi;_ Greek _φορέω<*pʰoreı̯ō_), whereas Germanic and Slavic have hemithematic (Germanic: Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/frawardijaną - Wiktionary, though perhaps as the result of _*eı̯>*iı̯;_ Old East Slavic Sg. 1 _voroču<*u̯ortı̯ō + -n,_ elsewhere _i<*eı̯,_ non-acute, e. g. _Sg. 3 vorotitь<*u̯orteı̯ti_), which look older (at least this is the usual situation with the opposition thematic : athematic).

Indo-Iranic, like Greek, has thematic verbs of state on _-ı̯e-:_ _manyate_ : _μαίνεται, kupyati_, _βαίνει_, whereas Baltic has athematic with _-i-:_ _mini_, Slavic has athematic with _i<*ī/eı̯_ (non-acute): _mьnitь_, _kypitь_, and Latin has athematic with both _-i-, cupit_, and _-ī-,_ _venīs_, depending on the structure of the stem. Again, the athematic form is likely older. In Greek, Balto-Slavic and Germanic these verbs have forms with _-ē-_ (Greek _ἐμάνην,_ Lithuanian _minėti, _Old East Slavic _mьně_); in Latin they are split into two separate verbs _(jaciō : jaceō; maneō)_; Indo-Iranic doesn't have a counterpart of this _ē-_form.

Baltic, Slavic, Italic, Germanic and Greek have non-Present stems on _ā, ē_ and _ō_ (the latter only in Greek and Baltic; in Germanic and Slavic they are indiscernible due to the merger of _*ā_ and _*ō_), e. g. Latin _senēre (seneō)_ : Lithuanian _senėti (senėju)_. This type is absent in Indo-Iranic (these stems don't have Aorist or Perfect), and this is most probably the original situation, so we see a shared innovation outside Indo-Iranic.

These are just three examples, but they show how patchy is the overall picture, when isoglosses randomly connect different branches. A daughter satəm language that was uniform enough to level dozens of roots with the former palatovelars would have probably led to greater similarity between various daughter lineages.


By the way, have I forgotten or nobody still hasn't answered what are the reasons to exclude the possibility that all these dispalatalizations occurred back in Proto-Indo-European?



Gavril said:


> Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but I was talking about Baltic/Slavic being separated from Indo-Iranian, not the split between Baltic and Slavic.


Yes, that was my mistake: I saw these 3 millennia and decided you meant the usual estimations of the time of the split between Indic and Iranic (3500 years ago) and between Baltic and Slavic (2500 years ago). Sorry.




Gavril said:


> Do you mean "shared palatalization", i.e. *K>*Š?
> 
> My contention is that it is unlikely for *K>*Š to precede the split of PIE, because that scenario seems to require the reconstruction of palatalized velars (*Kj) in almost all phonetic environments (not just before front vowels), which is typologically questionable, since these velars would not (according to what we can reconstruct) have co-existed with any other palatalized consonants, only with the palatal glide [j].
> 
> Since ablaut is a plausible alternative explanation (though perhaps not the only one) of the *K>*Š shift, then it is preferable to explanations that date the palatalization of *K to the period before the kentum languages split off.



The assibilation (i. e. the change of *_Kʲ_ into _ʦ/ʨ-_ and _ʣ/ʥ-type_ sounds) is of course a post-PIE phenomenon, and there is even no evidence that it occurred not in separate branches. The opposition _k : kʲ : kʷ_ was always regarded as parallel to that between the laryngeals: _hₐ : hₑ : hₒ, _even if phonetically these laryngeals represented different kinds of guttural sounds. If the opposition was binary, it could be compared with e. g. the Turkic one of the back and front _k_ (in most languages it depends on the back or front vocalism of the first syllable, though in standard Uzbek, where the former back and front vowels have merged, the opposition between two _k_'s has become phonological). Let me remind once again the nostraticist hypothesis that the threefold opposition of velars arose in middle Proto-Indo-European after the merger of the ancient vowels into _e:
*ka > *ke_ (and _*ko, *k∅_ as the result of the later ablaut)
_*ke, *ki, *kä > *kʲe_ (and later also _*kʲo, *kʲ∅_)
_*kü > kʲu
*ko > *kʷe_ (and later also _*kʷo, *kʷ∅_)
_*ku > *kʷu_
See my post here: Reconstructing IE h2 everywhere to get rid of /a/. Too much?

An intersting parallel to this latter scenario is found in two dialects of Ossetic. The more conservative Digor dialect preserves the short vowels _i_ and _u,_ as well as _k_ and _g_ before them. The more derived Iron dialect merges _i_ and _u_ into a middle sound _y,_ but assibilates _k, g_ before the former _i_ and labializes them (and _x_) before the former _u,_ e. g. Digor _kizgæ_ — Iron _čyzg_ "girl"; Digor _kud_ — Iron _kwyd_ "how" (Avestan _kuϑa_).


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> These are just three examples, but they show how patchy is the overall picture, when isoglosses randomly connect different branches. A daughter satəm language that was uniform enough to level dozens of roots with the former palatovelars would have probably led to greater similarity between various daughter lineages



If one accepts that these kinds of stem-types can be transferred (or reinforced) through contact, then it's not surprising that the branch that has been geographically separated from Balto-Slavic for the longest time (i.e. Indo-Iranian) shows less affinity with it than branches that have been much closer for the past three millennia. This doesn't preclude B-Sl. and I-Ir. having a genetic relationship, or having been in heavy contact at a much earlier point.



> By the way, have I forgotten or nobody still hasn't answered what are the reasons to exclude the possibility that all these dispalatalizations occurred back in Proto-Indo-European?



Sorry, I'm not sure what dispalatalizations you mean?



> The assibilation (i. e. the change of *_Kʲ_ into _ʦ/ʨ-_ and _ʣ/ʥ-type_ sounds) is of course a post-PIE phenomenon, and there is even no evidence that it occurred not in separate branches. The opposition _k : kʲ : kʷ_ was always regarded as parallel to that between the laryngeals: _hₐ : hₑ : hₒ, _even if phonetically these laryngeals represented different kinds of guttural sounds.



Sorry, I meant to write that it seems unlikely for the palatalization of *K -- the event that caused *K>*Š -- to have happened before the split of PIE. If the palatalization only happened in the satem branch(es), then it need not have occurred before back vowels/consonants, but could simply have entailed a change *K >*Kj > *Č/*Š before front vowels, the result of which was then generalized to other environments.

As far as *_h1_ being palatal: if we accept that the unattested *_h1_ existed (which I actually don't so far, but that's a different discussion), then there is no evidence compelling us to reconstruct it as *xj or *_ç_ specifically: a system of e.g.  / [x] / [ħ] for the laryngeals seems just as plausible.



> though in standard Uzbek, where the former back and front vowels have merged, the opposition between two _k_'s has become phonological).



Based on the quick search I did, Uzbek seems to have a [k]/[q] opposition -- is this the phonemic distinction you're referring to?

What I'm looking for is an example where palatalized [k] or another velar remains as such (i.e. as [kj] or similar) after the conditioning vowel environment has been lost, and without any additional palatal phonemes alongside it.

In the case of Turkic consonant harmony (as you describe it), the conditioning environment seems to still be there; in the cases of Uzbek and Ossetic, it doesn't seem to remain a palatalized velar, but instead has been assibilated to [tʃ] or retracted to [k]. And standard Turkish/Uzbek/Ossetic all seem to have additional palatal consonants like [(t)ʃ] and [(d)Ʒ] regardless.



> Let me remind once again the nostraticist hypothesis that the threefold opposition of velars arose in middle Proto-Indo-European after the merger of the ancient vowels into _e:
> ...
> *ke, *ki, *kä > *kʲe_ (and later also _*kʲo, *kʲ∅_)



The lack of evidence that this process happened with any of the other available IE consonants (*_p_, *_t_, *_s_, etc.) still seems very problematic to me.


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## Erkattäññe

ahvalj said:


> _Sthagitaḥ_ is the participle of _sthagayāmi _(Common Germanic _þakiđaz_ from _*þakjō_ — Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/þakjaną - Wiktionary; cp. _vartayāmi — vartitaḥ _: Gothic _fra-wardja_ — _fra-wardiþs_).
> 
> It looks like you regard the lack of _c/j/h_-assibilation in Indic as unusual and requiring specific explanations, while you postulate that the results of the satemization could have been leveled to either direction. As far as I imagine, this scenario could be probable only if we admit that this dispalatalization occurred at the velar stage (i. e. _K_ʷ_>K_ early and then some _Kʲ_ joined this _K_).
> 
> _Takati_ can be the late thematization of _takti.
> Laṅghati _can be the late thematization of _*lanakti, _cp. _anakti. _The same with other infixed forms you mention.
> 
> Compare also here Sanskrit Verbal Roots List with English Translation – Yogawiki the roots on _g, gh_ and _k, kh_.


 I assume that in the satem languages palatovelars (velars indeed) split into palatals and velars depending on the phonetic context already mentioned, as most of former palatovelars were assibilated (let's say 70%) all labiovelars turned into plain velars to fill the gap. So assibilation of K1 and delabialization of K2 is the same process and it happens in all satem branches.
I don't mean that there was an unitary satem language because some individual languages display some differences in palatovelar leveling (gutturalwechsel). I follow Kortlandt in most of his analysis of pie velars and I regard Indoiranian and baltoslavic as more closely related and armenian and albanian splitting a bit earlier.
Albanian is attested too late and it's "satemization" could have occurred later.
Indoiranian almost total palatovelar leveling has to do with the mid/low front and back vowel merger in my opinion.


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## Erkattäññe

Ahvalj, I cite the palatalization of old english from wikipedia to show how paradigm leveling and even loans from closely related languages can distort the ultimate picture, I expect something like this to have happened to the early satem dialects. The palataliztion triggers are not exactly the same for this case off course:

*Palatalization[edit]*
Palatalization of the velar consonants /k/ and /ɡ/ occurred in certain environments, mostly involving front vowels. (The phoneme /ɡ/ at that time had two allophones: [ɡ] after /n/ or when geminated, and [ɣ] everywhere else.) In the relevant positions:


/k/ became /tʃ/
/sk/ became /ʃ/
[ɡ] became [dʒ]
[ɣ] became [ʝ] (a voiced palatal fricative; it would later become [j], but not before the loss of older /j/ in certain positions discussed below)
Palatalization occurred:


Before /i, iː, j/, for example:
_ċīdan_ ("to chide"), _bēċ_ ("books", from earlier */boːkiz/), _sēċan_ ("seek", from earlier */soːkijaną/) (/k/ > /tʃ/); _bryċġ_ ("bridge", from earlier West Germanic */bruɡɡjoː/ after Proto-Germanic */bruɣjoː/) ([ɡɡ] > [ddʒ]); _ġifþ_ ("gives") ([ɣ] > [j])

Before other front vowels and diphthongs, in the case of word-initial /k/ and all [ɣ], for example:
_ċeorl_ ("churl"), _ċēas_ ("chose (sg.)"), _ċeald_ ("cold") (initial /k/ > /tʃ/); _ġeaf_ /jæf/ ("gave"), _ġeard_ ("yard") ([ɣ] > [j])

After /i/, /iː/ (possibly with an intervening /n/), unless a back vowel followed, for example:
_iċ_ ("I"), _dīċ_ ("ditch, dike") (/k/ > /tʃ/), but in _wicu_ ("weak") the /k/ is not affected due to the following /u/

For [ɣ] and /sk/ only, after other front vowels (/e/, /eː/, /æ/, /æː/), unless a back vowel followed, for example:
_weġ_ ("way"), _næġl_ ("nail"), _mǣġ_ ("relative") ([ɣ] > [j]), but in _wegas_ ("ways") the [ɣ] is not affected due to the following /ɑ/; _fisċ_ ("fish") (/sk/ > /ʃ/), but in _āscian_ ("ask") the /sk/remains

For word-initial /sk/, always, even when followed by a back vowel or /r/,[7] for example:
_sċip_ ("ship"), _sċuldor_ ("shoulder"), _sċort_ ("short"), _sċrūd_ ("dress", giving modern _shroud_) (/sk/ > /ʃ/)

Palatal sounds reverted to their non-palatal equivalents when they came to stand immediately before a consonant, even if this occurred at a significantly later period, as when *_sēċiþ_("seeks") became _sēcþ_, and *_senġiþ_ ("singes") became _sengþ_.

Palatalization occurred after a-restoration and before i-mutation (although it is unclear whether it occurred before or after h-loss). Thus, it did not occur in _galan_ "to sing" (cf. modern English _regale_), with the first /a/ backed from /æ/ due to a-restoration. Similarly, palatalization occurred in _dæġ_ ("day"), but not in a-restored _dagas_ ("days"; cf. dialectal English _dawes_"days") or in _dagung_ ("dawn", where the ⟨w⟩ represents the reflex of unpalatalized [ɣ]). Nor did it occur in _cyning_ ("king"), _cemban_ ("to comb") or _gēs_ ("geese"), where the front vowels/y, e, eː/ developed from earlier /u, a, oː/ due to i-mutation.

In many instances where a _ċ/c_, _ġ/g_, or _sċ/sc_ alternation would be expected within a paradigm, it was leveled out by analogy at some point in the history of the language. For example, the velar of _sēcþ_ "he seeks" has replaced the palatal of _sēċan_ "to seek" in Modern English; on the other hand, the palatalized forms of _besēċan_ have replaced the velar forms, giving modern _beseech_.

The sounds /k~tʃ/ and /ɡ~j/ had almost certainly split into distinct phonemes by Late West Saxon, the dialect in which the majority of Old English documents are written. This is suggested by such near-minimal pairs as _drincan_ [driŋkɑn] ("drink") vs. _drenċan_ [drentʃɑn] ("drench"), and _gēs_ [ɡeːs] ("geese") vs. _ġē_ [jeː] ("you"). Nevertheless, there are few true minimal pairs, and velars and palatals often alternate with each other in ways reminiscent of allophones, for example:


_ċēosan_ [tʃeːozan] ("to choose") vs. _curon_ [kuron] ("chose", plural form)
_ġēotan_ [jeːotan] ("to pour") vs. _guton_ [ɡuton] ("poured", plural form)
The voiced velars [ɡ] and [ɣ] were still allophones of a single phoneme (although by now [ɡ] was the form used in initial position); similarly, their respective palatalized reflexes [dʒ] and[j] are analysed as allophones of a single phoneme /j/ at this stage. This /j/ also included older instances of [j] which derived from Proto-Germanic /j/, and could stand before back vowels, as in _ġeong_ /junɡ/ ("young"; from PGmc *jungaz) and _ġeoc_ /jok/ ("yoke"; from PGmc *juką). (See also Old English phonology: dorsal consonants.)

Standard Old English spelling did not reflect the split, and used the same letter ⟨c⟩ for both /k/ and /tʃ/, and ⟨g⟩ for both /ɡ/ ([ɡ], [ɣ]) and /j/ ([j], [dʒ]). In the standard modernized orthography (as used here), the velar and palatal variants are distinguished with a diacritic: ⟨c⟩ stands for /k/, ⟨ċ⟩ for /tʃ/, ⟨g⟩ for [ɡ] and [ɣ], and ⟨ġ⟩ for [j] and [dʒ]. The geminates of these are written ⟨cc⟩, ⟨ċċ⟩, ⟨cg⟩, ⟨ċġ⟩.

Loanwords from Old Norse typically do not display any palatalization, showing that at the time they were borrowed the palatal–velar distinction was no longer allophonic and the two sets were now separate phonemes. Compare, for example, the modern doublet _shirt_ and _skirt_; these both derive from the same Germanic root, but _shirt_ underwent Old English palatalization, whereas _skirt_ comes from a Norse borrowing which did not. Similarly, _give_, an unpalatalized Norse borrowing, existed alongside (and eventually displaced) the regularly palatalized _yive_. Other later loanwords similarly escaped palatalization: compare _ship_ (from palatalized Old English _sċip_) with _skipper_ (borrowed from unpalatalized Dutch _schipper_).[8]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EDIT: also see this paper on centum words in satem languages with their reconstructed ablaut grade, you can even ignore the bangani (centum indoiranian language) examples sometimes regarded as a hoax by some researchers: http://www.srl.si/sql_pdf/SRL_2008_1_3.pdf
I'm still searching a link for the Čekman paper about "gutturalwechsel" with 70 examples.


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## ahvalj

I have finally read a recent description of Luwian (Melchert 2003) and it confirms that this language preserves outcomes of all the three sets of velars, e. g. (with Anatolian cognates from _Kloekhorst A · 2008 · Etymological dictionary of the Hittite inherited lexicon_):

_*kʲeı̯->zī-_ "to lie" (Hittite _ki-, _Palaic _kī- / _Lycian _si-_)
_*kʲr̥d->zart-_ "heart" (Hittite _ker, kard-,_ Palaic _kārt-_)
_*kʲu̯on->zuwan-_ "dog" (Hittite _kuu̯an- _"hound-man")
_*kʲos>zaš _"this" (Hittite _kāš, _Palaic _kā-_)

_*kʷis>kuīš_ "who" (Hittite and Palaic _kuiš, _Lydian _qis,_ Lycian _ti_)
_*sokʷo->daw-_ "eye" (Hittite _šākuu̯a-, _Lycian Pl. _tawa_)
_*gʷou̯->waw-_ "cow" (Lycian Pl. _wawa_).

***

An author of the Wikipedia article on the centum/satəm isogloss suggests an interesting attempt to reformulate the nature of the velar series in Proto-Indo-European (Centum and satem languages - Wikipedia): 


> One current idea is that the "palatovelars" were in fact simple velars *[k], *[ɡ], *[ɡʰ], and the "plain velars" were pronounced farther back, perhaps as uvular consonants: *[q], *[ɢ], *[ɢʰ].[25] If labiovelars were just labialized forms of the "plain velars', they would have been pronounced *[qʷ], *[ɢʷ], *[ɢʷʰ]. The following are arguments in support of that view:[_citation needed_]
> 
> The "palatovelar" series was the most common, and the "plain velar" was by far the least common and never occurred in any affixes. In known languages with multiple velar series, the normal velar series is usually the most common, which would imply that what have been interpreted as "palatovelars" were more probably simply velars.
> There is no evidence of any palatalisation in the early history of the velars in the centum branches, but see above for the case of Anatolian. If the "palatovelars" were in fact palatalised in PIE, there would have had to be a single, very early, uniform depalatalisation in all (and only) the centum branches. Depalatalisation is cross-linguistically far less common than is palatalisation and so is unlikely to have occurred separately in each centum branch. In any case it would almost certainly have left evidence of prior palatalization in some of the branches. (As noted above, it is not thought that the centum branches had a separate common ancestor in which the depalatalization could have occurred just once and then have been inherited.)
> On the above interpretation, the split between the centum and satem groups would not have been a straightforward loss of an articulatory feature (palatalization or labialization). Instead, the uvulars *q, *ɢ, *ɢʰ (the "plain velars" of the traditional reconstruction) would have been fronted to velars across all branches. In the satem languages, it caused a chain shift, and the existing velars (traditionally "palatovelars") were shifted further forward to avoid a merger, becoming palatal: /k/ > /c/; /q/ > /k/. In the centum languages, no chain shift occurred, and the uvulars merged into the velars. The delabialisation in the satem languages would have occurred later, in a separate stage.


As a comment: I don't understand why is everybody repeating that plain velars don't occur in the affixes: the suffix _-k-_ is perhaps the most widespread Indo-European suffix, whereas, in contrast, traces of palatovelars and labiovelars in affixes are very scanty (_yuvaśaḫ : antiquus_).


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## ahvalj

A less convincing (due to the paucity of examples of well-known Indo-European words) Albanian evidence from _Orel VE · 2000 · A concise historical grammar of the Albanian language∶ Reconstruction of Proto-Albanian: _66–77 [Albanian pairs at both sides of ~ represent Tosk and Geg variants].

66:


> The Proto-Albanian velars retained an important tertiary opposition — that of "pure" velars, palatal velars and labiovelars (the latter are differentiated from other velars before front vowels but merge with "pure" velars elsewhere). In this sense, the Proto-Albanian system of occlusives supports the Luwian evidence that Proto-Indo-European possessed three distinct velar oppositions.



_*k>k:_
*_kapmi>kam_ "to have" (Latin _capiō,_ Gothic _haban_)
_*kom>*ka->kë-~gë-: kom-stol-nā>*ka-stalnā>gështalle~kështallë _"splint, piece of wood"

_*g>g:
*stagā>shtagë_ "pole, stick" (Old Norse _stjaki_ 'idem', Latvian _stega_ "long pole")

_*gʰ>g:
*grabā>grabë_ "erosion, hollowing out" (Old High German _grab_ "grave", Slavic _grobъ_)

Later, _*k>q_ and _*g>gj_ before front vowels.

***

_*kʲ>*ʦ>th _(occasionally _ʦ_ is retained):
_*ʦerma>thjermë_ "gray" (Lithuanian _širmas_)
_*ʦermā>cermë_ "cold, frost" (Lithuanian _šarma_)

_*gʲ>*ʣ>dh:
*ʣamba>dhëmb~dhamb_ "tooth" (Sanskrit _jambha-_ "bit, peg", Greek _γόμφος_ "peg", Latvian _zobs_ "tooth", Slavic _zǫbъ_ 'idem')
_*ʣanra>dhëndër~dhandër_ "bridegroom, son-in-law" (Latin _gener_)

_*gʲʰ>*ʣ>dh:
*arʣai>herdhe_ "testicles" (Avestan Du. _ərəzī,_ Greek _ὄρχις,_ Armenian _orjikᶜ,_ Middle Irish _uirgge_)
_*marʣā>mardhë_ "chill, frost, ice" (Old Church Slavonic _mrazъ,_ Old East Slavic _morozъ_)


Word-initially _*ʣ>d_ if followed by a sibilant:
_*dārā>dorë_ "hand" (_<*gʲʰesr-:_ Greek _χεῖρ,_ Hittite _keššar,_ Tocharian A _tsar-,_ Tocharian B _ṣar-,_ Armenian _jeṙn_)

_
*ʦ>*ʧ>s_ and _*ʣ>*ʤ>z_ before _u:
*ʦurma>surmë_ "dark grey" (<_*kʲr̥mos:_ Lithuanian _širmas_ "gray")


"At a very early stage, in many words containing sonorants and, in particular, in the immediate contact with sonorants, palatal velars were depalatalized in Proto-Albanian and merged with "pure" velars":
_*grunā>grurë~grunë_ "wheat" (Latin _grānum,_ Old Irish _grán,_ Gothic _kaurn,_ Lithuanian _žirnis,_ Old East Slavic _zьrno_)
_*smekrā>mjekër_ "chin, beard" (Sanskrit _śmaśru-_ "beard", Lithuanian _smakras_ "chin").

***

Labiovelars originally developed into _*kw, *gw; _"in all positions, other than before front vowels, _w_ was lost"; "the resulting consonants were identical with "pure" velars":
_*peka>pjek_ "to bake, to cook" (Sanskrit _pacati,_ Greek _πέσσω,_ Latin _coquō,_ Slavic _pekǫ_)
_*grinja>grij~grîj _"to cut into pieces, to gnaw, to eat away" (Sanskrit _girati,_ Armenian _eker,_ Latin _vorō,_ Lithuanian _geriu_ "I drink", Slavic _žьrǫ_ "I devour")

Before front vowels, _*kw>*ʦw>*ʧ>s _and _*gw>*ʣw>*ʤ>z_ (as well as the outcomes of _*kʲu̯ _and _*gʲu̯/*gʲʰu̯_):
_*māʧ>mos _"don't!" (<*_mē kʷe: _Greek _μήτε_ "and don't!")
_*penʧe>pesë~pêsë_ "five" (Sanskrit _pañca,_ Greek _πέντε, _Latin _quīnque_)
_*ʤera>zjarr _"fire" (Sanskrit _haras- _"flame, heat", Greek _θέρος_ "summer", Armenian _ǰer_ 'idem')

***

Thus, before historical front vowels we in principle should find the following outcomes:

PIE palatovelars > _th, dh_
PIE plain velars > _q, gj_
PIE labiovelars > _s, z._


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