Updating my Pre-IE pdf (already!)

Considering that I made my aforementioned pdf of Pre-IE changes on the fly, it's expected that I have much work to do before I can be reasonably satisfied that all the errors are ironed out and that it properly reflects my current views. Odd as it may seem, all these ideas and theories were off the top of my head and boy oh boy, did I ever feel a great weight lifted off my half-shattered brain as I poured them into that file!

Here is the second version of my file. I know it's rather soon but it's necessary to fix some errors Besides, I get off on being obsessive-compulsive, LOL!

DiachronyOfPreIE_2008Jul02.pdf

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Now to explain the changes of my second draft of my Pre-IE theory. I recently remembered that the last time I had left the topic of Indo-Aegean Sibilantization, I had already renamed it Word-Final Lenition because word-final *-k may also have been reduced to a glottal stop at around the same time. Miguel Vidal had theorized something similar and I've come to grow fond of this spin on his ideas^[1].

I then rearranged the order of some changes in the Indo-Aegean section and added a very important sound change: Centralization. Centralization is the idea that an originally 3-dimensional vowel system was "centralized" and reduced to a 2-dimensional system. This new system that had developed would have had only a contrast in height between *a and *ə. This is also the point at which labialized stops first surface in the language. I suspect that this was an innovation spurred on by contact with an ancestral form of Proto-Abkhaz-Adyghe (aka Northwest Caucasian). This hypothesis is largely based on Allan Bomhard's theories on Nostratic and Pre-IE^[2] with a few notable twists and extra details which I've mentioned in the newest version of the pdf.

For Phoenix, I've added a few PIE examples (*wástu and *márḱos) to add support to the Labial Dissimilation Exception of Vowel Shift at the end of Late IE. Time will tell whether there are good objections against my hypothesis though.

I also corrected my error concerning "Root Aorists" in the Post-IE section since, based on the example I provided, obviously I meant to say "Thematic Aorist". Mea culpa. Thank you, Rob, for spotting that and asking questions. Verb forms like *likʷét "she left" and *widét "she knew" are now considered by Indo-Europeanists as a later innovation that can't be reconstructed for the Proto-IE stage.

NOTES
^[1] Miguel Carrasquer Vidal, "Re: [tied] Dissimilation of gW/kWVw to gVw/kVw", Cybalist (Yahoogroups) (Apr 19 2005) (see link). Here, he proposed that *-ku > *-kʷ > PIE *-h₃ while final *-ki > *-h₁. I feel that this is unnecessarily complex but that the idea of the dual ending evolving as *-ak > *-aʔ > PIE *-(i)h₁/*-e (via Laryngeal Vocalization) entoxicates me since it could potentially explain the relationship between PIE's dual on the one hand and Uralic *-k(V) & EA *-k on the other. Lenition already explains the connection between PIE *-es and Uralic plural marker in *-t.
^[2] Bomhard, Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis (1996).