There's absolutely nothing of the sort. I
only showed that Old Indic did some late rule restructuring while traces of the
older (less "derived") state of affairs pop up in Vedic. A careful analysis of
the data reveals that Bartholomae's Law as a historical process (which is also
evidenced for Iranian, as Bartholomae himself demonstrated) operated Grassmann's
Law, though in the handbook explanation of "what happens to the aitch in Buddha"
they are often reversed. We also have to distinguish between Grassmann's Law as
a diachronic sound change and as a synchronic grammatical rule in Sanskrit, and
between pre-Indo-Aryan reconstructions and Sanskrit underlying forms. The fact
that more recent morphological processes may obscure earlier phonological
developments is part of the historical linguist's ABC. If we had English as the
only surviving Germanic language, there would be next to no evidence for
Verner's Law.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2002 5:37 AM
Subject: [tied] Re:Bartholomae, Grassman and Masica's X
As best as I could keep up, I take it that from the parts of
your post below
that certain circumstances in the language's development can
account for the
fact that Grassman's law seems to take effect
prematurely. Is there anything
in these circumstances that could
indicate some other path of development out
of PIE? Or that might
suggest that Vedic is somehow older than previously
thought or that it did
not develop directly out of the same parent in the
same way as other IE
languages?