Re: [tied] "Satem" Law

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

> 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

********
I seem to remember discussion of all this a few months ago.
Anyway, Golab's "Origin of the Slavs, a Linguist's View" (1991) lists
45 old kentum words in Proto-Slavic, many relating to cattle
breeding, wooden constructions, tools, and social terms. After some
pages of discussion I couldn't really summarize, he concludes:
"we can hypothesize that the Proto-Slavs seem to be the
descendants of a satemized earlier kentum population of the northern
half of the so-called Tripolye culture. That earlier kentum
population could in its turn represent some indoeuropeanized
descendants of the oldest non-IE ethnic layer of the primary
Tripolye culture."
Reasonable or unreasonable to our experts?
Dan