Re: [tied] Re: Check out Origin of Ancient Languages

----- Original Message -----

From: tgpedersen

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Monday, October 14, 2002 12:42 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: Check out Origin of Ancient Languages

> That's not nice. They make the assumption all branches stayed put, model doesn't work, they assume one of the branches changed neighbors, model works. If that's a "face-saver", what is then the proper of correcting one's erroneous assumptions?

 

Well, does it work? It only seems to work if they ignore Germanic and Albanian. The effects of "changing one's neighbours" are not discussed at all. It is taken for granted that such an explanation would work. Placing Germanic within the Satem core to save the model looks like a medicine that is more harmful than the disease it's supposed to cure.

> OK, mr. Ringe is surprised where he shouldn't have been. Not good.

 

He was surprised where most people wouldn't have been. If that made him see Anatolian in a new light, it was a good thing.

> Nice, if the Grimm shift took place in the invading Bastarnean-speaking army around 0 CE under the impression of similar developments (before consonant) in the language of their Iranian-speaking leaders.

I must say that this is the most eccentric explanation of Grimm's Law I've ever seen. The spirantisation of voiceless stops before consonants took place already in Proto-Iranian, and if the leaders of your Bastarnae were indeed Scytho-Sarmatian Iranians, why didn't they enforce any other phonetic Iranisms in their army? E.g. intervocalic *-xt-, *-ft- should have become voiced (-Gd-, -vd-) well before the year zero in all of East Iranian including Sarmatian. And why did they make their subjects devoice plain voiced stops as part of Grimm's Law? There's nothing like that in Iranian.

 

Piotr