Re: Why there is t- in German tausend "thousand"?

2013/11/20, dgkilday57@... <dgkilday57@...>:

>

(...)

>
> *Bhr.: May I let You remember You've written "the most plausible
> explanation is the expansion of commercialism northward from Florence
> in the later Middle Ages", i.e. some centuries later than OHG tu^sunt
> &c.? Now You would have to suggest that the most plausible explanation
> is referred to a time when Florence was an obscure hamlet of herdsmen
> and fishermen
>
> [DGK:]
>
> No, my explanation does not require that OUG _tu:sunt_ had to start
> spreading northward immediately after it was formed, when Florence was a
> mere hamlet. Both _tu:sunt_ and *tru:bo could have minded their own
> business in Upper Alemannic for several centuries, and only started
> spreading when Florentine commercialism and the wine-trade did.

*Bhr.: This would explain the spread of #t- forms in Standard German,
but what about their attestation in Late OHG? They're the only two
words with frequent #t- - why just they? Clearly later trade
diffusion cannot have anything to do


(...)

>
> *Bhr.: As You see, nobody - least so Alinei - supports my ideas, so
> You can spare caring for counter-hypnosis until I succeed in
> convincing somebody
>
> [DGK:]
>
> What about Gianfranco? You defend his Basque theory, and he fails to
> support your ideas? Such ingratitude!

*Bhr.: In Your game, the player who lumps more words into one family
(most easy if through loans) wins; in Comparative Linguistics, the
player who most thoroughly reconstructs unattested phases of languages
wins. I'm playing Comparative Linguistics; Basque's affiliation to
Indo-European tremendously widens the detailed reconstruction of
Europe's linguistic prehistory, so it's me who am grateful to
Gianfranco Forni.

(...)

> >
> *Bhr.:, so why should Kluge &c. have written there's no explanation for
> #t-?
>
> [DGK:]
>
> They did not. "Lautlich zu erwarten wäre nhd. d-", they wrote s.v. tausend,
> not "es gibt keine Erklärung für nhd. t-". See the comments s.v. Docht:
> "Der Anlaut t im Ahd. und Mhd. beruht auf einer auch sonst zu beobachtenden
> [sic] Weiterverschiebung (vgl. tausend)." Other examples of OHG or MHG t-
> from Gmc. *þ- can be found s.vv. dempfen, deuten, deutsch, Donner, dorren,
> dörren, du, Ton 'Lehm', Trümmer, and tunken, probably s.v. Truhe, and in my
> opinion s.v. dunkel (which I prefer to connect with _tunken_ and Lat.
> _tingo:_, not with ON _dokkr_). Your method of constructing a ghost lexeme
> for each example would turn High German into a haunted house.

*Bhr.: tiutsch tahe trumm tunken are only MHG and we are dealing with
OHG instances; tempfen tiuten tonar torrēn terren truha tu in Notker
are regular at sentence beginning and word-initially when the
preceding word ends in a voiceless sound, while in Alsatian OHG, in
Upper Alemannic, in the glosses of St. Gallen, and in the "Codex of
Salzburg" (Salzburger Verbrüderungsbuch) of 784 (cf. also the Glossae
Keronis) are due to Romance scribal uses (<t> for <th>).
Only occur tu^sun and tru^bo occur quite often. For the latter, "nhd.
Traube (...) Grundbedeutung wahrscheinlich »Klumpen«. (...)
Wahrscheinlich zu idg. trup (Weiterbildung zu tru [...]). Vgl. lit.
trupùs bröcklig, trupù trupė́ti in Brocken zerfallen (...)"
(Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit unter Mitwirkung von
Hjalmar S. Falk gänzlich umgearbeitet von Alf Torp (Vergleichendes
Wörterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen von August Fick — Vierte
Auflage — Dritter Teil), Göttingen, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1909
[573 S.], p. 195), cf. Pokorny IEW 1073 (√*treuH- in Old Slav. tryjǫ)
: ibid. 275 √*dhreubh- gr. thrýptō ,zerreiben, zerbröckeln (...)‘
(√*dhreuHp- in OSax. drūƀōn), therefore OHG thrūbo < PIE *truHp-ón- ≠
OHG trūbo < PIE *dhruHbh-ón- (OHG synonyms from parallel PIE synonymic
roots)

> [DGK:]
>
> On the other
> hand a Weiterverschiebung would have to be either a regional third
> consonant-shift or a sporadic wandering of d- to t- which would make Sean
> Whalen jump for joy. I prefer instead a Sonderverschiebung, with Gmc. *þ-
> unaffected by the High German shift, but developing regularly in normally
> accented words into *t- in (at least) Upper Alemannic and Upper Bavarian,
> and *d- in Central German dialects.
>
> In principle this hypothesis is testable by examining the geographic
> distribution of t-anlaut in these words, something which I intend to do in
> coming weeks.
>

*Bhr.: So you'll try to demonstrate something that dozens of scholars
have already tried to do, while I'm satisfied with proposing something
that every scholar should have already taken into consideration and
has never done just because of a prejudice against PIE reconstructions