Re: Order of Some Indo-Iranian Sound Changes

On 2009-02-24 21:44, Andrew Jarrette wrote:

> Is it possible that *g in Common Slavic, or at least Proto-Slavic, was
> actually [G] rather than [g]? After all, that could explain why it
> becomes /h/ (actually _voiced_ /h/, no?) in Czech, Slovak, and
> Ukrainian

... and Upper Sorbian. It's a breathy-voiced glottal glide, very much
like English /h/ between vowels, as in <behind>. Note that when /h/
undergoes final or assimilatory devoicing in Czech, the result is /x/,
and the pronunciation of <sh> varies dialectally between /sx/ and /zh/.

> (and Belorussian? On Wiki it says that Belorussian <h> is
> pronounced [G]),

Yes, as also in the southern dialects of Russian. And it has a palatal
counterpart, /G'/.

and why its palatalized form is /Z/ rather than /dZ/.

Not impossible. However, palatalised *zg yielded *z^3^, with a voiced
affricate. Perhaps *[g] and *[G] were positional allophones.

> Later developments such as the second palatalization might have
> operated after a *[G] was hardened to [g], and therefore led to
> phonemes such as /dz/ in some dialects.

Yes, that would explain why the languages which have /h/ for *g show /z/
as the result of the second palatalization even if they have /dz/ of
other origin, e.g. from *dj (well, Slovak has eliminated _all_ traces of
the second palatalisation when the voiced velar was affected).

> Just to be certain, is <szcz> actually [StS] in Polish, unlike Russian?

Yes, that's right. The second segment is always an affricate. We also
keep /ZdZ/ from *zg before front vowels, and from *zdj.

Piotr