Re: The meaning of life: PIE. *gWiH3w-

From: tgpedersen
Message: 52542
Date: 2008-02-09

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> On 2008-02-09 00:11, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > ?? In what sense convergent?
>
> A _similar_ pattern of dissimilation, but not _the same_ historical
> process. Grassmann's Law in Greek is not only younger than the
> devoicing of aspirated stops in the language, but even younger than
> the lenition of *s > h.

Why is that?


> >> but independent change in each case, not a homology. Italic,
> >> Germanic and Armenian preserve DH...DH roots and the contrast
> >> between them and D...DH.
> >
> >
> > I know all that, as I desperately tried to communicate in the
> > posting. The idea was: suppose the <aspirated>V<aspirated> ->
> > <unaspirated>V<aspirated> rule was active synchronically in all of
> > PIE, Greek and Sanskrit. That it doesn't exist in the rest of IE
> > would mean that it ceased operating there.
>
> Ana a lost contrast was restored? Grassmann's Law means the falling
> together of *D...DH and DH...DH. If a root like *dHegWH- had
> undergone dissimilation already in PIE, yielding *degHW-, we would
> get Skt. dáhati (correctly), but neither Lat. foveo:, nor even Gk.
> tépHra: come out as expected. Greek would actually require a
> cancellation of Grassmann's Law, *degWH- becoming *dHegWH- again,
> then aspirate devoicing (*tHekWH-), and finally Grassmann's Law once
> again, yielding *tekWH- > tepH-. And how would the "no-Grassmann"
> branches have managed to restore *dHegWH-, leaving e.g. *g^embH-
> unaffected? How did they know which *D- was original and which had
> resulted from aspirate dissimilation?

But suppose Grassmann's law was initially a phenomenon of zero degree
forms where the two stops are in contact (I'd have to assume zero
degree of the reduplication syllable in the perf. sg.)? There'd be
plenty of forms to restore the original roots from later then.


Torsten