>>Bartholomae's
>> Law and Grassman's Law, ...
>could you explain how you understand the two
> laws "imply" two different orders of events?
I have just read Piotr's magisterial and magnificent posting on this (for
which thank you, Piotr!) but I still thought a Sunday School outline of the
problem might also help (I should say "apparent problem" in the light of
Piotr's posting).
You'll find various ways of explaining it in Collinge's "Laws of IE". He
quotes Stemberger, who says it is "very messy".
In brief:
Bartholomae's law involves a deaspiration, and should be thought of as
happening in two steps:
1. assimilation: Dh + t- > DhDh even across a morpheme boundary
2. deaspiration: Dh > D when it is the first element in a cluster
The deaspiration alone is seen in forms like labdhva < *labh-dhva.
Now the trouble is that Grassman's Law appears at times to occur before this
deaspiration, and at other times after it.
Schindler (1977, reference below) says "No system in which Grassmann's Law
applies to both reduplication and initial aspirates can [explain the
evidence] without losing one of two generalisations." He says if Grassman's
Law comes first, there must be two deaspirations, and if there is one
deaspiration, there Grassmann's Law must be split into two.
(a) The usual pattern is seen in *bHudH-ta > buddha-. Here the order apears
to have been Grassmann, then deaspiration (*bHudH-ta > *budH-ta > *budHdHa-
> buddha). [Though the middle two steps could be the other way round.]
If the deaspiration in the cluster occurred first, Grassman's Law would
no longer apply, and we would expect the outcome to be *bHuddHa.
Example after example shows this apparent pattern of Grassman followed by
Bartholomae
(b) Unfortunately when the deaspiration occurs in other contexts, it is
clear that Grassman has not preceded it!
e.g. future bhotsyati, aorist abhutsi
and compare the noun stem -budh, which gives bHut, budHam, bHudbhis, etc
Here Grassmann's law could not have applied before the deaspiration.
There have been many attempts to disentangle what's going on. Some folks
try to have two deaspirations, one before and one after Grassmann, some try
to redefine the morpheme boundary so Grassman would still apply to *bHuddha,
some even deny the reality of Grassmann's law at all. One version of the
law even allowed for "optional" aspiration. There are also bunches of
exceptions to whatever rules we put forward.
There was an article by Jochem Schindler in JIES 1977, substantially along
the lines Piotr suggests, in which he says that original roots of the form
*Dh-Dh end up with four different forms, chosen according to context. So
PIE *bHudH appears in Skt as:
budh (before a vowel or resonant)
bud (before dh-)
but (before th-)
and bhut (before #)
You will have noticed that this does not explain the future forms or the
noun forms above.
Peter