Re: German "ge-" before participe perfect

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Thu, 07 Aug 2003 11:04:25 +0000, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...>
> wrote:
>
> >> The only objection I can imagine
> >> to a development *kom- > ga- is why we fail to see the same

thing

> >> in other preverbs, such as ver- (*fer-).
> >>
> >
> >But don't we? At least in Dutch, that 'v' is a voiced f, and since
> >the Germans spell it with 'v', not 'f', it is tempting to assume

they

> >once pronounced it the same way (why else would they need a 'w'?).
>
> The voicing of initial f- > v- and s- > z- in Dutch and German

applies to

> any initial *f- and *s-, not just to those in preverbs.

Begging the questoin. You are assuming what you set out to prove,
namely that the 'v' in <ver-> is an /f/.

>
> Actually, the Verner development one might have expected in the

preverb

> *per- would have resulted in PGmc. *ber-.
>

It is with great relish that I point out to you, as Piotr has done
several times to me, that Verner applies only to continuants. Thus
[*k, *p] > Grimm [*x, *f] > Verner [G, v]. It follows that it is the
Dutch (or rather the Flemish) who are in the right when they
pronounce Ge-, f.er- (ask any Dutch-speaker to say 'very much'), and
everything else is a later development. That makes the development to
English ye- and Berlinerisch je- easier to understand.

Torsten