Re: Odp: Cowboys on Horseback (Germanic)

----- Original Message -----

From: Alexander Stolbov

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Friday, November 12, 1999 11:38 AM

Subject: [cybalist] Re: Cowboys on Horseback (Germanic)

 

<<The change *s > *x > *h (in Greek and Iranian, but also e.g. in Brythonic Celtic) is again a rather common process.>>

 

If so, could the following process take place (theoretically and practically)?

 

                    PIE             GBS            Germanic

 

               *k            *s            *x (*h)

               *g            *z            *k

               *gh          *zh          *g

 

(GBS = Germano-Balto-Slavic)

This won't work: first, because the inherited *s and *z (i.e., the PIE voiced allophone of *s) are continued without any changes in Germanic (e.g. *suHnus gives English son, not hun);

Perhaps *s1 < *s was not phonetically equal *s2 < *k ?

 

"Perhaps" is superfluous, since the two CAN'T have been the same phonetically. But since *s2 developed back into a velar in Germanic, why assume any point-of-articulation changes in that branch in the first place? (This is what I understand by zigzag derivations.) Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, and there is no need to complicate Grimm's Law by positing an intermediate stage between *k and *x in Germanic.

 

secondly, because most sound changes are asymmetrical, i.e. do not normally operate in the reverse; this is particularly true of velar palatalisations. The change of a palatalised velar stop into a fricative or affricate is commonplace (cf. Russian ruka : ruchka; iskat' : ishchu, etc.; similar things have happened independently in many Slavic, Romance, Germanic, Aryan and other languages), but the change of a fricative into k would be extremely unusual. -- Piotr

As far as I can judge, both developments g > zh and zh > g are usual in Russian

    prygat' (to jump) : pryzhok (a jump)     and     lezhat' (to lie on smth.) : ljagu (I shall lie on smth.) (cf. Deutsch liegen)

 

The same can be said about k > ch and ch > k or g

    plakat' (to weep) : plachu (I weep)     and     tech (to flow) : teku (I flow) or zhech (to burn smth.) : zhgu (I burn smth.)

   

There are many native speakers of other Slavic (Slovenian, Polish, Ukrainian) and Germanic (Swedish, English, Dutch, German) languages among the list members. I wonder whether there are analogues things in these languages?

 

I'm sorry, Sasha, but you entirely misconstrue the Russian evidence. No matter which forms you'd like to regard as basic in modern Russian (or SYNCHRONICALLY, as linguists put it), the historically (or DIACHRONICALLY) underlying forms in all the alternations you quote are those with *k and *g. E.g. teku and tech come respectively from *tek-om and *tek-ti (like noch < *nokti-; likewise, ch in zhech derives from older *-g-ti assimilated to *-kti). The Indo-European root was *tek-/tok- (cf. Tocharian B cake 'river' or Sanskrit tak- 'run'). Similarly, the well-known root *legh-/logh- yields Russian lezhat', ljagu, polozhit' etc., as well as English lie, lay and lair. You can see (different) palatalisations before *j and historically front vowels in both groups, but the direction of change is always the same -- just as I said, and as any historical grammar of Russian will tell you.

Absolute proofs can rarely be offered in historical linguistics, but your scenario requires a lot of zigzagging between kentum and satem types just in order to justify the classification of Germanic together with Balto-Slavic. This looks like desperate wiggling out of trouble.

What to say? It does. Would my wiggling be less desperate when I'd tried to prove that similarities in morphology of Germanic and Balto-Slavic were caused by fortuitous coincidences? Or by borrowing of the grammar??

---

I could perhaps answer this question if you told me more precisely which morphological similarities you have in mind. The way you put it, it sounds as if Germanic and Balto-Slavic were really very close morphologically. Cross-linguistic grammatical convergence is certainly common (whatever your double question mark suggests). For example, there are many morphological similarities uniting the unrelated or distantly related languages of the Balkan league (such as Romanian, Bulgarian and Turkish); one could also invoke examples of Finnic influence on the East Baltic languages.

 

Piotr