Re: [tied] Grimm and Verner

--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 13:16:42 -0000, "tgpedersen"
> <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> >Verner's law, as stated here, has a disjoint condition: "if ... or

it

> >is initial". First, perhaps on might say that this is valid only

in

> >English north of the South Counties, Friesian and North Germanic,

in

> >German, Dutch and South Counties, the latter condition doesn't

apply

> >(unless this is a later process?).
>
> What do you mean?

As in the general case: what I say.

>Dutch has replaced initial f- and s- with v- and z-
> (although pronounced f- and s- in Northern Dutch). Std. German

writes

> v- (pronounced f-)

and that's why I suspect it was once pronounced v-.

and s- (pronounced z-). Initial þ- is d- in Dutch

> and German, but then so is medial /þ/.

Does Verner leave any "medial T"? What do you mean?

> Initial x- has become h-
> everywhere.

Now that's a good counter-argument. If voicing had applied initially,
we would't get h-.

In English, þ- remains (except in a more or less closed

> category of words where it is ð-), and southern dialects indeed
>have a
> tendency to weaken f- > v- (s- > z- ?).

I've seen "Zomerzet" somewhere. Why "weaken"? I'd call it voicing.
I have never been able to locate a decent English Dialect map, with
iso-phono-whatever they're called, anywhere. They seem to be content
to characterize their dialects impressionistically
("lilting", "singing", "high-pitched"). I wonder if Prof. Higgins
shouldn't have stuck to his desk a bit longer?

> I don't recall if Vennemann
> says anything about this in his Verzweigungstheorie, but I can look

it

> up later. I'd say these are more recent phenomena, nothing to do

with

> Verner's (which worked in all of Germanic, even if Gothic has

leveled

> out most of the grammatical implications).

You'd say; I'd say something else. Evidence? I don't question Verner,
I just want to leave out the "if initial" part. The question is: can
you formulate it thus: in the "voicing" dialects of Germanic, the "if
initial" part of the condition should be left out (thus #t- > #D- (>
#d-), without loss of generality), or is there evidence that it went
via the detour over #T-, thus #t- > #T > #D- (> #d-)?

>
> >Second, where valid, the "initial"
> >part of the condition could be replaced by:
> >
> >1. To separate words Germanic has a laryngeal ("knacklaut")
> >
> >2. Laryngeal unvoices following fricative.
>
> The glottal stop is only there when there's an initial vowel.
> In view of what I wrote yesterday about the origin of Verner's law,

it

> would be interesting to have a glottal stop / high tone marking the
> *right* edge of the word boundary. What's the story on the stød
> (Danish and Vestjysk) again?

The standard explanation is that the Danish stød corresonds to
Swedish tone I, although it's more similar phonetically to Swedish
tone II, which has left no trace in Danish.
I tried ask the question once on the usenet whether Danish stød and
Swedish tones had a connection with eg. IE tones (). No dice, the
textbook explanation is that stød and tone I originate in ON one-
syllable words. No attempt to relate single-syllable-ness to other
phenomena. The buck stopped there (they say).
BTW, something comes to mind here. In Fyn and Jutland, the stressed
syllable has a higher (minor or major third) than the other
syllables, in Copenhagen it lower by the same amount (this is my own
observation, for some reason I haven't seen inter-syllable tone
height in Danish described anywhere).

>
> >This could explain why in ON poetry, words beginning with vowel

are

> >considered as beginning with the same consonant. One more thing,

the

> >timing precision of the "attack" on a note is very important in

rock

> >music, for which this sudden release of the vocal chords is

perfect

> >(and I have it on the authority of Philip Glass, that rock music

only

> >works in Germanic languages).
>
> Nie pierdol!
>
> =======================
> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
> mcv@...

No, no. You got us mixed up. Piotr's Polish, I'm Danish. Translation
please (my Langenscheidts Dun´ski-Polsk Taschenwörterbuch has fallen
through the floorboards somewhere)!
BTW, my phonetics teacher, Rischel, taught that in Dutch (as in
French) it was difficult to separate words in connected speech. No
other Germanic language I know abbreviates <I> as <'k>.

Torsten