From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 17442
Date: 2003-01-06
----- Original Message -----
From: "João Simões Lopes Filho" <jodan99@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, January 06, 2003 1:29 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Russian for Homerus; G/H in Eastern Europe
> In Ukrainian, Belarusian, Slovakian and Czech this trait g>G>h is common. May it reflect some Eastern European substratum?
The change of g > G > h can also be seen in Upper Sorbian and in the south(west)ern dialects of Russian. This innovation links southern East Slavic with the Czech-Slovak-(Upper)Sorbian cluster; it's possibly an old areal feature, but I doubt if it can be associated with any pre-Slavic substrate. Of all the voiced stops, /g/ develops fricative allophones or changes into a fricative most readily.
Piotr