From: Juha Savolainen
Message: 17075
Date: 2002-12-09
> On Sun, 8 Dec 2002 13:19:54 -0800 (PST), Juha=== message truncated ===
> Savolainen
> <juhavs@...> wrote:
>
> >Isoglosses, linguistic changes which are common to
> >several languages, indicate either that the change
> was
> >imparted by one language to its sisters, or that
> the
> >languages have jointly inherited it from a common
> >ancestor-language.
>
> Or that the languages have carried through the same
> change
> independently. If the change is a phonological one,
> the more common
> the development is cross-linguistically, the more
> likely it is to have
> been an independent change.
>
> >Within the IE family, we find
> >isoglosses in languages which take or took
> >geographically neighbouring positions, e.g. in a
> >straight Greece-to-India belt, the Greek, Armenian,
> >Iranian and some Indo-Aryan languages, we see the
> >shift s > h (e.g. Latin septem corresponding to
> Greek
> >hepta, Iranian hafta).
>
> The change also occurs in Brythonic Celtic. The
> development s- > h-
> is so common that it has little value as a marker of
> joint innovation.
>
> >In the same group, plus the
> >remaining Indo-Aryan languages, we see the
> "preterital
> >augment" (Greek e-phere, Sanskrit a-bharat,
> "he/she/it
> >carried"). Does this mean that the said languages
> >formed a single branch after the disintegration of
> PIE
> >unity for some time, before fragmenting into the
> >presently distinct languages?
>
> There are at least two possibilities:
>
> 1) The augment was present in PIE, and it was lost
> everywhere but in
> Greek, Armenian, Phrygian, Indo-Iranian. In this
> case the augment is
> not a shared innovation, and has no value for the
> purpose of this
> discussion.
>
> 2) The augment is a joint innovation of the above
> mentioned groups
> (plus perhaps Balto-Slavic, judging by a trace of
> the augment in the
> Slavic past tense of the verb "to be" b-e^). In
> that case, the
> development of the augment is a shared innovation,
> and it's certainly
> significant that teh groups having it are more or
> less contiguous.
>
> >No, for this group is itself divided by separate
> >developments which the member languages have in
> common
> >with non-member languages. Best known is the
> >kentum/satem divide: Greek belongs to the Kentum
> >group, along with Italic, Celtic, Germanic,
> Anatolian
> >and Tocharian, while Armenian and Indo-Iranian
> share
> >with Baltic and Slavic the Satem isogloss (as well
> as
> >the "ruki rule", changing s to sh after r, u, k,
> i).
>
> There is no Kentum group. The shared innovation is
> *k^ > s(h)ibilant.
> Languages that have this change can be grouped
> together as the Satem
> group (even though there is no guarantee that the
> change did not take
> place several times independently [Luwian a point in
> case]).
> Languages that do not have this change (the
> so-called Kentum group) do
> not necessarily have anything in common because of
> this.
>
> >Thus, the Kentum languages form a
> >continuous belt from Anatolia through southern to
> >western and northern Europe, and the Satem isogloss
> >likewise covers a continuous territory (only later
> >fragmented by the intrusion of Turkic) from central
> >Europe to India. To be sure, there are serious
> >exceptions here, e.g. there are Kentum languages
> far
> >removed from Europe, viz. Tocharian in Xinjiang and
> >proto-Bangani in the western Himalaya;
>
> There *are* no Kentum languages, so this is
> unremarkable.
>
> >and there is a
> >later satemizing tendency within the Kentum group,
> >viz. in the Romance languages (none of which
> >pronounces its word derived from Latin centum with
> a k
> >sound), Swedish and English (where wicca became
> >witch).
>
> And this has nothing to do with the Satem
> innovation. We *know* these
> are completely independent (and _conditioned_)
> palatalizations.
> Conditioned palatalizations (in the neighbourhood of
> front vowel or
> *y) are a dime a dozen: there is probably no
> language in the world
> that hasn't had them in its recent history, and they
> are completely
> worthless as a sign of common innovation. What
> makes the satem
> development rather more unique is the unconditioned
> nature of the
> change k^ > fricative.
>
> >Hock himself unwittingly gives at least one example
> >which doesn't easily admit of a different
> explanation:
> >"The same group of dialects [Germanic, Baltic,
> Slavic]
> >also has merged the genitive and ablative cases
> into a
> >single 'genitive' case. But within the group,
> Germanic
> >and Old Prussian agree on generalizing the old
> >genitive form (...) while Lithu-Latvian and Slavic
> >favor the old ablative". (p.14) Clearly, Old
> Prussian
> >and Lithu-Latvian lived in close proximity and
> >separate from Germanic and Slavic for centuries, as
> >dialects of proto-Baltic, else they wouldn't have
> >jointly developed into the Baltic group, distinct
> in
> >many lexical and grammatical features from its
> >neighbours. So, if the Baltic language bordering on
> >the Germanic territory happens to share the
> Germanic
> >form, while the languages bordering on Slavic
> happen
> >to share the Slavic form, we are clearly faced with
> an
> >areal effect and not a heirloom from PIE days.
>
> The position of Old Prussian (West Baltic) within
> the Baltic group is
> not necessarily as clear-cut as how it's described
> above. It is
> possible that West and East Baltic did not go
> through a Proto-Baltic
> stage but are independent descendants of
> Proto-Balto-Slavic.
> As to the genitive-ablative in the o-stems, it's
> also far from clear
> whether Old Prussian shares anything with Germanic.
> The Germanic
> genitive (Goth. -is, ON -s, OE -es, OS -es, -as, OHG
> -es) goes back to
> *-es(a) (PIE pronominal *-esyo) or *-as(a) (PIE
> pronominal/o-stem
> *-osyo). The East Baltic (Lith. -o, Latv. -a) and
> Slavic (-a) Gen.
> goes back to the PIE Ablative *-o:t (*-o:d). The
> Old Prussian gen. is
> -as (deiwas), which cannot go back to PIE *-os(y)o.
> If it's from
> *-os, the only parallel would be Hittite gen. -as,
> which is highly
> unlikely. The best solution is probably that Old
> Prussian -as comes
> from the ablative *-o:(t) > -a, with -s added after
> the genitives of
> the non o-stem nouns (which have *-(e)s everywhere
> in Balto-Slavic).
> If so, all the Balto-Slavic langauges share the
> replacement in the
> o-stems of the gen. by the abl., which I suppose
> counts as a shared
> innovation.
>
> >A second example mentioned by Hock may be the split
> >within the Anatolian group, with Luwian retaining a
> >distinction between velar and palatal but Hittite
> >merging the two, just like its Greek neighbour.
>
> The innovating language here appears to be Luwian:
> it