Re: Satem shift

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: tgpedersen@...
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2001 12:10 PM
> Subject: [tied] Re: Satem shift
>
>
> So, I hear: a linguistic development dividing two languages, rules
> leaving a few stragglers behind...
> I wonder if the shibbolethisation mechanism I proposed
>
> http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/Shibbolethisation.html
>
> might come in handy to explain the centum/satem thing?

--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> According to sociolinguistically minded scholars like William Labov
(who has studied many an ongoing sound change and measured its
progress), sound change is typically initiated as a gradual
transformation of the phonetic features of a phoneme without regard
to lexical or grammatical factors (thus displaying
mechanical "Neogrammarian" regularity). It usually occurs below the
level of social awareness (and so is "imperceptible"). In its later
stages, however, sound change often develops a social significance
and spreads by lexical and social diffusion -- word by word and
speaker by speaker, prone to lexical, grammatical and socio-stylistic
conditioning. It is no longer imperceptible, may affect salient
distinctive features simultaneously and consist in abrupt phonemic
replacement. Lexical diffusion often fails to affects all the target
words and leaves messy exceptions even in the long run.
>
> What you call shibbolethisation is possible at that late stage.
What I mean is that no-one ever starts a sound change deliberately,
but a change in full swing creates forms that may be utilised as a
means of social bonding and regarded as prestigious or deprecated.
There may have been a time when pre-Proto-Indo-Iranians who still
labialised their /kW/'s were scorned by their neighbours. "For Diwos
sake, what do you mean by speaking like that? Did you hear him, lads?
He said [k_W_etwores], like a bloody Proto-Greek. [kWetwores], would
you believe it? He's a refayned person. He thinks he's smarter than
us Aryas."
>
> Piotr
>
It's nice to hear that I've produced something useful.
Could that also serve as an explanation of the proposed re-
centumisation of Germanic?
But I was also thinking also of the idea that shibboleths arise first
within inflexion patterns which are then regularized differently
within different sociological groups, and then become shibboleths.
If that were the case, one should first look for such an inflection
within the language in question (and also for favorite enemies and
the development of that sound in their language, which might be used
as a tool in constraining the location of a language).

A not quite parallel example: When we were kids, my brother and I
disagreed on the plural of "tog" (= train). I said "tog" (since it's
neuter), he said "toge" (similar to "huse" houses - many neuters
(except those equal to the verb stem) now add the plural ending of
common gender (which is -e in Danish), unlike Swedish). So we both
had a valid argument (although we didn't know it then - it was
linguistic intuition); the perfect condition for switching to non-
verbal arguments.

Torsten