Re: [tied] Grimm and Verner

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 11873
Date: 2001-12-18

In my opinion the Armenian consonant shift and the less securely established Thracian shift are independent from, and probably much older than Grimm's Law (or at least than its final stages). I don't see how a common Latin/Greek shift could be defended -- the developments in Greek and Latin are only partly convergent. The typology of possible systems resulting from {dH, t, d[~]} is limited and pretty well exhausted by the attested IE developments; little wonder that different branches sometimes followed similar evolutionary paths.
 
I'm sympathetic to the view that a fortis pronunciation of the voiceless series (I'll use the notation {t}) was characteristic of "Western IE" (Celtic, Italic and Germanic). One possibility is that both {dH} and {t} were pronounced with a spread glottis (as opposed to {d}). A spread glottis produces aspiration-like effects, and the resulting sound can easily change into a continuant. In Italic, spirantisation affected only the {dH} series (e.g. *dH > *D [*-D-/*T-] > *f-/*-d-/*-b-), and the {t} : {d} contrast was stabilised as [-/+ voice] rather than [+/- spread]. In Germanic, spirantisation ultimately affected the {dH, t} subsystem in most positions, while {d} ended up with unmarked phonation. In Celtic, there was at least allophonic spirantisation of both {dH} and {t} (leading, amont other things, to the erosion of *p > *f > *h > zero), whereas {d} merged with {dH} as {[d/D]}.
 
Piotr
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2001 4:11 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Grimm and Verner
 
 
Hmm.. My focus was more on the aspiration of the voiceless series (*t
> *th), and, for "Western-IE" in general (including Armenian and some
of the Balkan languages, but excluding Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian and
some other Balkan languages) a common (areal) plosive system /th/ /t/
/d/ (with different origins for it, to be sure, in Latin-Greek vs.
Celtic-Germanic-Armenian).