Re: [tied] PIE Stop System

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> That would require a most unlikely conspiracy: several different
> languages would have had to change their /p/'s into /b/'s (etc.)
> independently after imparting their loans to Germanic. To make
> things worse, those shifts would have to be very recent: Gmc. *ri:k-
> shows the effect of *e: > i: in Celtic, and the 'hemp' word can't
> have been borrowed before hempen products or the plant itself
> reached Northern Europe (probably about the 6th c. BC, courtesy of
> the Scythians). Greek has <baite:> for Gmc. *paido:. Would you be
> prepared to defend the view that there was a change of *p > Gk. b
> during the first millennium BC?

Can we be sure that the Celtic word meant hemp originally, and not
something else that was later changed to hemp with the arrival of
hempen products?

As for the Greek word I would have to look into that a little closer
before I would defend anything.