Re: Germanic Scythians?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
> To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Monday, March 24, 2003 3:37 PM
> Subject: [tied] Re: Germanic Scythians?
>
>
>
> > T: You realize of course that the same argument might be used

against the occurence of laryngeals in PIE?

> >
>
> No, because there is a lot of comparative evidence for the

laryngeals (from the direct attestation of some of them in Anatolian
to branch-specific "special effects" caused by them especially in
Greek, Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic), and that overrules other
considerations. One has to respect the evidence in the first place,
but there is none of it for the conjectured ejectives.

Substitute "occurrence in Armenian" and "Winter's law" and you have
the situation for glottalic stops. BTW the latter links glottalicness
and laryngeals, which links also their likelihood of diappearing from
IE.

> Even if the independent loss of the laryngeals in several branches

was unusual (and I'd claim that the loss of dorsal fricatives of
glottal glides is far more likely than the change of [t'] > [d]), we
have independent evidence that it _must_ have occurred.

>

You would, wouldn't you? ;-)

Torsten