Glottalic Theory - Original Glottalic Proposal

Original Glottalic Proposal

The Glottalic Theory proposes different phonetic values for the stop inventory of Proto-Indo-European:

In his version of the Glottalic Theory, Hopper (1973) also proposed that the aspiration that had been assumed for the voiced stops *bh, *dh, *gh could be accounted for by a low-level phonetic feature known to phoneticians as "breathy voice". This proposal made it possible both to establish a system in which there was only one voiced stop and at the same time to explain developments in later Indo-European dialects (Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit) that pointed to some kind of aspiration in the voiced series.

Gamkrelidze and Ivanov (1973, 1995:5-70) have posited that both non-ejective series (traditional *p *t *k and *bh *dh *gh) were fundamentally aspirated (that is, *ph *th *kh and *bh *dh *gh, respectively) but had non-aspirated allophones (that is, *p *t *k and *b *d *g). According to them, the non-aspirated forms occurred in roots where two non-ejectives were present because of a rule that prohibited more than one aspirate in the same root. To express the variability of aspiration, Gamkrelidze and Ivanov write it with a superscripted h, for example dʰ. Thus, an Indo-European DʰeDʰ (where Dʰ represents any non-ejective stop) might be realized as DeDʰ (attested by Indic and Greek) or as DʰeD (attested by Italic). In contrast, traditional theory would trace a form attested as both DeDh and DheD to an Indo-European DheDh. The advantage of this interpretation over the previous is circumventing the typological oddity of the language having only voiced aspirates by identifying the voiceless non-aspirates of the traditional stop system (*p *t *k) as voiceless aspirates (*pʰ *tʰ *kʰ).