From: tgpedersen@...
Message: 6447
Date: 2001-03-08
> ----- Original Message -----to
> From: tgpedersen@...
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 4:24 PM
> Subject: Re: Odp: Odp: [tied] Desatemized Germanic
>
>
> --- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> > Nope, AFAIK. And the reintroduction of *kW etc. would have been
> even more difficult. Evolution does not flow back like that.
> >
> > Piotr
>
> Does that include -k- in Russian <v ruké>?
> Also Norwegian <mote> 'fashion' (<- French 'mode' and purge of
> Danish /d/ in the Danish/other Scandinavian d/t shibboleth, comes
> mind.19th
> Or final -a in coll. Swedish <timma> (for <timme>) 'hour'?
> Swedish after the liberation from the Danes and Norwegian in the
> century seem to me perfect examples languages "flowing backwards".
>
> > Torsten
>
>
--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> But any deliberate "reversal" engineered by non-linguists is likely
to leave a residue of older forms overlooked by the "purifiers". Show
me a single example of residual satem developments in Germanic.
>
> Russian does display effects of the second palatalisation e.g. root-
initially (cena, celyj, cvet, zvezda), though not in declensional
alternations. But the "declensional dispalatalisation" is easily
explicable as due to the combined influence of analogy and the non-
palatalising northern dialectal substrate. It isn't a wholesale
reversal of the historical process -- just a "local" analogical
simplification.
>
> Piotr
>
But that "easy explication" is identical to the mechanism I call a
shibboleth purge! And as for a shibboleth partner language; I seem to
recall that Poles and Russians haven't got along great all the time
at least in historical times (although I don't have a time handle on
the second Slavic palatalisation).
As to "linguists" affecting the development of language: For your
argument to work, "linguists" should be a recent (say, post 1800)
phenomenon (apart for the fact that Norwegian <mote> <- Fr. <mode>
doesn't show the hand of an expert linguist!). Greek, Sanskrit and
Latin writers have all had a lot to say about how language should be
saved from "corruption" i.e. change.
Another example comes to mind:
Dutch German Danish
dapper tapfer tapper
This word was borrowed into Danish from German. pf/p is a recognized
shibboleth between German and Danish, hence pf -> p. But t/d isn't,
so the initial t- was not changed. From the standpoint of historical
linguistics the word is abnormal. From a Danish sentimental point of
view, it has to do with the Schleswig wars and "den tapre
landsoldat", the stock phrase for the Danish soldier. Now where is
the hand of the linguist in his study in this?
Torsten