--- 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.
>
[snip]
> Piotr
Let me try to rephrase what I think you are saying:
A rule /k/ -> /s/ (satemisation) cannot be undone because after the
rule has applied there is no way to identify those /s/'es that have
resulted from the rule from other /s/'es.
To I think I would reply:
But if /k/ -> /s/ (satemisation) happened in PIE in the same way as
other /k/ -> /s/ changes (cf. Latin -> French) it probably happened
by stages, e.g. /k/ -> /k´/-> /ch/ -> /sh/ (-> /s/). And none of the
phonemes before /s/ in this sequence is in the consonant inventory
usually assumed for PIE. Therefore they would have been easy to spot
even for non-linguists. E.g.
for a noun k-C-C-
Nom.Sg. kéCC- > k´éCC-
Acc.Sg. kCéC- kCéC-
then shibbolethisation and purge
kentum-languages generalizing the Acc.Sg.
Nom.Sg. kéCC-
Acc.Sg. kCéC-
and satem-languages the Nom.Sg.
Nom.Sg. k´éCC-
Acc.Sg. k´CéC-
whence they could go on on the road to /s/-
Probably the differentiation went a little further (/ch/ instead of
k´) before shibbolethisation, but this was easier to write.
As you can see, this way there would be no misidentications for the
retro-purge.
Torsten