Reconstruction talk:Proto-Semitic/yad-

Could the wording of the comment be improved? --Barytonesis (talk) 23:17, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Glottal stop and jod
Most branches show an initial glottal stop /ʔ/ while others show an initial jod /j/. One can remarks that both never appear together: it's either /#ʔV/ or /#jV/. Thus 3 hypothesis come forth:
 * The PS root began with /jV/, and most branches independently developed a loss of the vowel, leading to a syllabification /#jC#/ > /#iC#/, and, because a word has to begin with a consonant, a glottal stop was added.
 * The PS root began with /ʔi/, and some branches independently either lost the initial glottal stop and the initial vowel underwent a kind of diphthongue /#iC#/ > /#jVC#/, or made the diphthongue first, and the glottal stop was lost /#ʔjV/ > /#jV/.
 * The PS root contained both, whence a normal triconsonantal root ʔ-y-d instead of both biconsonantal roots proposed above, and phonological shifts in the descendants deleted the glottal stop or syllabified the jod and reanalysed the /i/ as a part of the word.

It was asked to improve the comment or to propose a better reconstruction. I haven't followed any book writing this, these are just propositions drawn from personal thoughts to help the aforesaid improvement. If you have knowledge about PS, feel free to delete this comment and to tell me this if you consider it is worthless. Malku H₂n̥rés (talk) 15:18, 24 October 2020 (UTC)