Re: [tied] "Satem" Law

From: Daniel J. Milton
Message: 24623
Date: 2003-07-17

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:
> 17-07-03 03:08, Abdullah Konushevci wrote:
>
> > For example, Slavic languages are considered to be "satem" and
> > different in this way from "centum" languages (Celtic, Germanic,
> > Tocharian). This means that palatal stops k' and g' which turned
> > into k, g in Celtic, here in Slavic became fricatives: s and z.
But
> > this rule, which is the absolute law for Avestan, can be ignored
by
> > Common Slavic, and such words as *kamy (a stone), *bergü (a
river
> > bank), *gordü (a town), *go.sï (a goose) were not effected by
> > this "satem" law. But still Slavic is known as a satem language,
for
> > the list of words having s and z instead of palatals is much
longer:
> > *sïrdïke (a heart), *pisati (to write), *prositi (to ask),
*zïrno
> > (grain), *znati (to know).
>
> I haven't done any precise counting, but a complete list of Satem
> reflexes in Slavic would be several pages long, while the
exceptions are
> just isolated individual words. A few of them look like _real_
> exceptions (words in which the Satem shift failed) e.g. *svekry
> 'mother-in-law', *go~sI 'goose', *korva 'cow', possibly *kamy
(*kamen-)
> 'stone'. Others may be old loans, e.g. *bergU and *gordU. Few
sound
> changes anywhere are 100% exceptionless, and the analysis of
exceptions
> found in the Satem languages (especially Baltic, Slavic and
Albanian)
> reveals certain subregularities pointing to the existence of
inhibiting
> contexts where the change was blocked or less likely to occur
(e.g.
> before a liquid in Albanian and Baltic). That's also normal
linguistic
> stuff. Leaving all that apart, we consider the Slavic, Baltic and
> Albanian languages "Satem" (in addition to Armenian, Indo-Iranian
and
> presumably Thracian) for two reasons:
>
> (1) They show the Satem shift in the first place (no
documented "centum"
> language has anything of the kind, even in isolated cases; the
only
> doubtful case is Luwian, but there the "Satem" layer may be partly
of
> Indo-Iranian origin, partly an illusion).
>
> (2) The proportion of exceptions (whether real or apparent) to
the "as
> expected" cases is insignificant. There are not enough exceptions
to
> call into question the essentially regular character of the Satem
shift.
>
> Piotr
********
I seem to remember discussion of all this a few months ago.
Anyway, Golab's "Origin of the Slavs, a Linguist's View" (1991) lists
45 old kentum words in Proto-Slavic, many relating to cattle
breeding, wooden constructions, tools, and social terms. After some
pages of discussion I couldn't really summarize, he concludes:
"we can hypothesize that the Proto-Slavs seem to be the
descendants of a satemized earlier kentum population of the northern
half of the so-called Tripolye culture. That earlier kentum
population could in its turn represent some indoeuropeanized
descendants of the oldest non-IE ethnic layer of the primary
Tripolye culture."
Reasonable or unreasonable to our experts?
Dan