Re: [tied] Re: Germanic Scythians?

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 20080
Date: 2003-03-19

----- Original Message -----
From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 12:30 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Germanic Scythians?


> P: There is no such price attached to the traditional formulation of VL. It's satisfactory as it is.
>
> T: Different strokes for different folks. At least I don't hypostatize my personal opinions to communis opinio.

That _is_ the general opinion of linguists -- ask anyone and tell me who disagrees. I have no personal reason to prefer the orthodox version of VL. Simplicity and elegance WITHOUT any extra cost have made it remain attractive ever since Karl Verner formulated it that way. If you find it unsatisfactory, may I know why?

> People would disagree here. And I'm afraid you're up against greater minds than mine. I didn't invent the glottalic theory and there are people who push it indendently of my 'Tungri' proposal.

It's still demonstrably untenable for pre-Germanic (the way Theo Vennemann wanted to reformulate Grimm's Law), and the version popularised by Gamkrelidze and Ivanov doesn't even work for PIE. Judging from its appearance in publications, the glottalic theory is already past its heyday. A less ambitious version may have some value for discussing the origin of the "labial gap" in the PIE stop system, the morpheme structure constraints prohibiting roots like *bed-, etc., but -- and here I agree with Jens, Glen and Miguel -- glottalisation was a pre-PIE phenomenon.

Piotr