Re: Initial d/t alternation

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: tgpedersen@...
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2001 8:19 PM
> Subject: [tied] Initial d/t alternation
>
>
> Nom. *deH2-n- > *da:n-
> Acc. *dH2-en- > *d'an- > *tan-
> Gen. *dH2-n-
>
> where /d/ is plain (non-aspirated, non-glottalic, as Kordtland

proposed).

> Or, if an initial *s-/*t- alternation (in Greek) is OK, why isn't

*d-/*t-?

> (I know it doesn't quite follow the pattern, due to the number of

consonants (3 vs. 4). But anyway!)

> Hope this is "definite" enough. Feel free to take it apart.
>
>
> Torsten

--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> There isn't much to take apart yet. In this application of
Lubotsky's rather controversial hysterodynamic scheme I fail to see
what *dh2-en- > *d'an- > *tan- is supposed to stand for. The
alternation t-/s- in Greek reflects the different syllabification of
*u/*w (*tu-/*tw- > tu-/s-). But how does *dh2- become *t-, and what
for? (I mean, what particular facts do you want to explain in this
way?). Knowing your patriotic preoccupation with Dan-, I suppose you
really meant to write *dh2en- > *dHan- > Germanic *dan-. What does
*deh2-n- mean? What's the fully inflected form of each case, by the
way, and what IE reflexes do they account for?
>
> Piotr
>

It is kind of you to try to correct my mistakes, but I actually meant
what I wrote. However, perhaps I should have written /t'/ instead
of /d'/, using the standard glottalic notation. I wrote /d'/ to stand
for "plain non-glottalized non-aspirated stop + glottalization"
(which then becomes a glottalized stop) starting from /d/ as plain
non-glottalized non-aspirated, as Kordtland proposed plus a laryngeal
glottalizing the stop before it.

You are of course right that I'm trying to get a *d- out of the
wringer, but I was proposing doing it in a much more ambitious way. I
intended to replace the first Germanic sound shift with a version of
my own.

But in order to give some background on my thought processes (or what
tries to pass as such) I suggest you read

http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/Shibbolethisation.html

So, given those ideas, here's what I propose:

Roots of the form *D-H- (D any plain stop, H any(?) laryngeal in PIE)
will give rise to paradigms with Nom *T'-/Acc *D- (T' being the
homorganic glottalized stop).

Most IE languages generalize *D-. ProtoGermanic generalizes *T'-
(while deglottalizing them).

Now we have a phonetic (not just single-word, as the
original "shibboleth") shibboleth *d-/*t-, between PGmc and
neighboring languages. Presumably the Skiri and the Bastarni couldn't
stand each other, so we might have had Skiri *d- and Bastarni *t-,
but it might have been the other way around.

Now they (or at least the *T- speakers) generalize this difference to
all occurrences of /*D/ in their language. This, to outsiders, looks
exactly like /D/->/T/ (Note!: D means [b, d, g], T means [p, t, k]).
But they miss some. Cf. Lat Nom. major -> French maire, Acc majore- -
> French majeur, an example of a nominative survivng a purge of Latin
nominatives in the Romance languages.

Where does this leave us within PIE? Well:

Names of gods and people from the PIE Nom. *da:n-

Names of places (rivers!) from the PIE Acc. *tan-

BTW Danish <Tannis bugt>, the bay west of the Skagen peninsula.
My "NuDansk Ordbog" says it probably contains -næs, 'naze, peninsula'
but is otherwise obscure.

It also has "danne-, in composites the same as dane-". This could be
a mixed form, showing influence of *tann-.

If you find any faults in this, please don't hesitate to correct them.

Torsten