Re: [tied] Re: Latin barba in disaccord with Grimm's Law?

At 4:51:38 PM on Tuesday, June 20, 2006, mkelkar2003 wrote:

>>> Whether it is *kwou or *gwou is more than just a matter
>>> of intellectual curiosity, right? I have already quoted
>>> BArber (2001) to the effect that who changed what and
>>> how has an impact on deciding the homeland and hence the
>>> history of real people.

>>> http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1674658

About the best that can be said for the author of that
article is that he means well.

>> *kWou- and *gWou- point to different homelands? Just how
>> do they do so?

> Well, Verner's Law was later needed to account for
> exceptions to the Grimm's Law.

> <http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=584056>

This article is substantially better, but if you're going to
rely on popular sources, Wikipedia is far better than this.

> "This (Verner's Law) discovery gave a depth of history to
> Proto-Germanic. In Proto-Indo-European, as also in early
> Greek and Sanskrit, and still in a few modern languages
> like Latvian and Slovenian, accent was a variable pitch
> that could be on any syllable. It was clear that this was
> true of early Proto-Germanic, and allowed Verner's Law to
> apply."

> Not sure what is meant by "This (Verner's Law) discovery
> gave a depth of history to Proto-Germanic." Does it mean
> it makes the Germanic family look older than it is?

No. She's simply saying that pre-Vernerian Proto-Germanic
still had the old free accent.

[...]

> http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=497644

> "Grimm's Law is considered a product of the wildly veering
> mind of Jacob Grimm (philologist, anthologist, and
> nationalist)"

A good reason to ignore everything2.com, I'd say.

Brian