--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Grzegorz Jagodzinski"
<grzegorj2000@...> wrote:
>
> Professor Witold Man'czak, a famous Polish Romanceist, in his
"Fonética and morfología histórica del Español", wrote (p. 33):
>
> <<
> § 85. Desarrollo regular: ssi, sse entre voc. > j > [s^] > [x]:
>
> *bassia:re > bajar, russeum > rojo
> >>
>
> Btw. single -si- yielded -s- in Spanish, not -j-, like in ba:sio: >
beso.
>
> In other words, -j- in pájaro is regular if we accepted the
intermediate form *passiarum
This just leaves the Portuguese and Romanian forms irregular. It
seems that sometimes er>ar instead of er>r and in Spanish that caused
the shift of +front back, palatalizing the preceding ss / ts.
> (btw. chícharo is irregular or dialectal, as Latin c [k] should not
yield ch [c] in Spanish at all so any parallels between the
development of -c- and -ss- in cicer and passer are wrong
The intermediate stages of ke > kYe > tse > etc. leave room for ts >
tsY > ts^ in a specific environment. Since I've already said er>Yar
in one, the same changes in another (of e>a before r with a pal. of
the preceding C) make 3 points of similarity between these two words.
I think that's too much to be a coincidence instead of a rule. Even
if you just call them irregular, they are irregular in the same way.
> Anyway, the example of pájaro shows clearly how valuable are certain
reconstructions, including IE reconstructions. I see no reason for
supposing that there were differences in number of "exceptions"
between Romance and Indo-European development. And because the number
of such "exceptions" in Romance languages is quite fair, I am not
surprised that plenty of IE words developed irregularly as well.
Any number of reasons might make PIE > early IE more regular: fewer
speakers (and dialects), less contact with others, no written language
to draw on, etc. Whatever the reason, I see no reason to think there
were very many irregular sound changes > IE. This is separate from
unique dissim., met., etc.