It should perhaps be pointed out that among the early Iranian
loanwords that entered Armenian before the soundshift there are some
that exemplify the Iranian deaspiration of the voiced aspirates;
such b d g (from Indo-Iranian bh, dh, gh, which are preserved in
Indic) also become p t k in Armenian in the old stratum. Now, you
posit these phonemes as PIE "b, d, g", and in indigenous words they
generally correspond to Arm. b, d, g, which you also take to
represent the old state of affairs without change. The question is
now, how can borrowing from a language supposedly *preserving* "b,
d, g" into another language that supposedly *preserves* "b, d, g"
cause these phonemes to change into p, t, k? I guess one will have
to rank this as impossible.
Jens
--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "etherman23" <etherman23@...>
wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "elmeras2000" <jer@...> wrote:
> > The Iranian words in Armenian certainly could not, for that
would
> > make the borrowing older than the separation of Indic and
Iranian
> > which both have /d/ from traditional /d/ (your /t/). It would be
an
> > incredible coincidence that such old words found their way
> > precisely into Armenian, the same language which also received
the
> > influx of loanwords of specifically Iranian shape.
>
> Why couldn't this be explained by a long period of contact between
> the languages?