[tied] Re: Grimm's Law is about to expire (Collinge 1985, p. 267, T

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mkelkar2003" <swatimkelkar@...> wrote:

> "Gamkrelidze has also called into question the paths of transformation
> into the historical Indo-European languages. Grimm's assumption (known
> as "the classical system") was that Germanic, Armenian, and Hittite
> daughter languages underwent a systematic sound shift and Sanskrit
> remained faithful to the original consonants."

Did Grimm actually formulate it for Armenian? He was long dead by the
time Hittite was deciphered. Also, it is not totally certain that PIE
*d > Hittite [t] - it seems possible that the fortis/lenis contrast of
Hittite was actually /t/ v. /d/!

> It just seems improper to club a lately attested Germanic together
> with the first to branch of Anatolian and at the same time argue that
> an equally old Sanskrit escaped this transformation.

But the date of the earliest writing is immaterial unless you are
comparing the earliest written forms of each branch. Then you do have
to be careful and try to compare like with like, though admittedly
that's rather tricky for Anatolian.

> Agreed. Let us start over again. Gramkrildze proposed the glottalic
> theory to get the homeland moved to eastern Anatolia. Good for him!

> What should MY PIE stops be in order to make India (Pakistan and
> Bangaldesh) as its homeland?

Voiceless, voiced and implosive? That should then match
Austroasiatic. But be careful to keep the 'labiovelars' as labialised
velars and not true labiovelars, or we'll be looking at West Africa!

> "In the original Proto-Indo-European proposal, there was a fourth
> phonation series, aspirated /pH, tH, k^H, kH, kWH/, assumed to exist
> by analogy with Sanskrit, which at the time was thought to be the most
> conservative Indo-European language."

Please conform to the list's typographical conventions. You should
use the Latin-1 character set unless there is a very good reason to do
otherwise. I've corrected the notation above.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottalic_theory
>
> I notice that Gamkrildze has got these back in in the Table titled
> "Proto Indo-European plosives recent." He has also got rid of the
> voiced stops which are abundant in Sanskrit. I know from reading the
> debate between Grimm/glottalic that the farther PIE gets from Sanskrit
> the closer its homeland gets to India.

The Wikipedia article's current statement on trends in stop
development is a little doubtful. Note that [d] > [t] etc. and [d] >
[tH] are quite common - much of Eastern Asia (large chunks of
Austroasiatic, Tai-Kadai and Sin0-Tibetan) have recently lost voicing
contrasts. Do Gamkrelidze and Ivanov really write superscript 'h' to
indicate variability? It's normally written superscipt to show that
one is not writing a cluster, just like 'j' for palatalisation.

Richard.