Re: [tied] Re: hal

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 13989
Date: 2002-07-12

 
----- Original Message -----
From: richardwordingham
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, July 12, 2002 2:11 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: hal

> However, apart from it being a potential Celtic change, this is probably a red herring.  The change is late enough for English to preserve 's' in the River Severn, Latin Sabrina, but Welsh Hafren.

Not necessarily a red herring; it could be an independent parallel development of the same tendency (cf. umlauts in Germanic). The Brittonic languages generalised the lenited variant of *s- ([h-]) to all positions (<saith> is a rare exception) and the same may have happened on the continent.
 
Piotr