Re: [tied] Grimm and Verner

On Tue, 18 Dec 2001 21:53:14 +0100, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
<gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
>To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
>Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2001 7:07 PM
>Subject: Re: [tied] Grimm and Verner
>
>
>> But if the distributions form a geographical pattern, it would seem to be more than random chance:
>
> Gmc \\ Balt
> Celt ... \\ Slav Iran
> -------\ ... \\
> Ital \ Thr \\ Alb Ind
> Grk \ Arm \\
>
>This representation is rather tendentious, especially as regards the location of Greek, Armenian and Albanian. Proto-Italic developed somewhere in Central Europe, east rather than south of Proto-Celtic. Proto-Hellenic and Proto-Armenian must have been located sufficiently close to Proto-Indo-Iranian to form a convergence area.

There's only so much precision you can give to a "map" using ASCII
characters. Towards the southeast (Balkan peninsula) things get
crammed together and mixed up by later migrations. For Proto-Italic I
would favour a position southeast of Proto-Celtic, and not too far
from Proto-Greek. Greek, Thracian, Armenian, Albanian would all have
started out on a broad "front" just north of the Balkan peninsula, and
it's impossible to say whether my proposed layout (West to East:
Grk-Arm~Thr-Alb) is correct.

>> West of the thick line, we have:
>
>> (I) /th/, /t/, /d/;
>
>> east of it we have:
>
>> (II) /th/ < *tH
> /t/ < *t
> /dh/ < *dh
> /d/ < *d
>
>> Subtype (Ia) has:
>/th/ < *t,
>/t/ < *d,
>/d/ < *dh,
>
>> while (Ib) [Italo-Greek] has:
>/th/ < *dh,
>/t/ < *t,
>/d/ < *d,
>
>There are many risky interpolations here. For example, why Italic {tH} from {dH}? All I can see there is fricatives with voiceless and voiced allophones.

There are no voiced allophones in O-U.

>It won't do to ascribe an Indic-style four-way system to every group east of the thick line, including Baltic and Slavic. Putative *x < *kH < *kh2 in Slavic is _very_ doubtful, and there's no evidence whatsoever for *tH or *pH there.

I accept *kH > x for Slavic (soxa ~ 'sakHa:). The argument itself is
of course typological: we cannot have /dh/ without /th/. The
Balto-Slavic evidence for *dh is even more indirect (it didn't
lengthen a previous vowel like *d did, so assuming the lengthening was
caused by the voicedness of *d, *dh must have been less voiced, as
murmured stops are).


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