17-07-03 03:08, Abdullah Konushevci wrote:
> For example, Slavic languages are considered to be "satem" and
> different in this way from "centum" languages (Celtic, Germanic,
> Tocharian). This means that palatal stops k' and g' which turned
> into k, g in Celtic, here in Slavic became fricatives: s and z. But
> this rule, which is the absolute law for Avestan, can be ignored by
> Common Slavic, and such words as *kamy (a stone), *bergü (a river
> bank), *gordü (a town), *go.sï (a goose) were not effected by
> this "satem" law. But still Slavic is known as a satem language, for
> the list of words having s and z instead of palatals is much longer:
> *sïrdïke (a heart), *pisati (to write), *prositi (to ask), *zïrno
> (grain), *znati (to know).
I haven't done any precise counting, but a complete list of Satem
reflexes in Slavic would be several pages long, while the exceptions are
just isolated individual words. A few of them look like _real_
exceptions (words in which the Satem shift failed) e.g. *svekry
'mother-in-law', *go~sI 'goose', *korva 'cow', possibly *kamy (*kamen-)
'stone'. Others may be old loans, e.g. *bergU and *gordU. Few sound
changes anywhere are 100% exceptionless, and the analysis of exceptions
found in the Satem languages (especially Baltic, Slavic and Albanian)
reveals certain subregularities pointing to the existence of inhibiting
contexts where the change was blocked or less likely to occur (e.g.
before a liquid in Albanian and Baltic). That's also normal linguistic
stuff. Leaving all that apart, we consider the Slavic, Baltic and
Albanian languages "Satem" (in addition to Armenian, Indo-Iranian and
presumably Thracian) for two reasons:
(1) They show the Satem shift in the first place (no documented "centum"
language has anything of the kind, even in isolated cases; the only
doubtful case is Luwian, but there the "Satem" layer may be partly of
Indo-Iranian origin, partly an illusion).
(2) The proportion of exceptions (whether real or apparent) to the "as
expected" cases is insignificant. There are not enough exceptions to
call into question the essentially regular character of the Satem shift.
Piotr