Re: [tied] Re: Germanic Scythians?

At 5:44:55 AM on Monday, March 24, 2003, tgpedersen wrote:

>> The shift of [t'] > [d] (presumably via an implosive) is
>> possible, but the chances of such a change occurring
>> independently in several branches (Greek, Indo-Iranian,
>> Balto-Slavic, Albanian, Italic and Celtic, not to mention
>> minor extinct groups) are pretty low.

> Objection: IE spread. Thereofore all the known IE
> languages may have substrates.

Producing the same change in several branches independently?
It doesn't matter much what triggered the change; as long as
it's independent in the several branches, elementary
probability theory will tell you that it's unlikely.

Brian