Re: [tied] Rune-essay Mads Peder Nordbo

On Sat, 15 Dec 2001 17:01:24 -0000, "malmqvist52"
<malmqvist52@...> wrote:

>There were also some new points about the origin of the p-rune.
>If I may summarize the theory I undrestood it as if there originally
>were only one sound( or the b- and p- sounds were too similar to have
>different runes).

The reason is that /p/ did not exist in Proto-Germanic (because */b/
did not exist in PIE).

>Then came a change in the language wich made the p-
>rune necessary.

The emergence of /p/ as a separate phoneme (borrowings from Latin,
etc.)

>For some reason the rune carvers in scandinavia then switches back to
>write with only th b-rune (cf. the Vadstena bracteate). This Nordbo
>dates to ca 550.

Shortly afterwards, the /d/ and /g/ runes were abandoned as well,
leaving only B, T and K to represent the stops b/p, d/t, g/k. The
reason B was dropped first, is because it never was used much anyway
(because few if any native Germanic words contain /p/).

The relevance of Grimm's (and Verner's) law is that it turns the PIE
*b hole (near absence of */b/ in Proto-Indo-European), into a
Proto-Germanic *p hole (near absence of */p/: PIE *p > PGmc. *f/*b,
PIE *bh > PGmc. *b, and no */b/ to turn into */p/. The sequence *sp,
which is usually regarded as unaffected by Grimm's law, is in fact
better analyzed as Proto-Germanic */sb/).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...