Re: [tied] Germanic prefixes and Verner's Law [was: German "ge-" be

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Sun, 10 Aug 2003 17:01:03 +0200, Piotr Gasiorowski
> <piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:
>
> >While I agree that neither scenario is impossible, I nevertheless

prefer

> >the first solution as the null hypothesis for the following

reasons:

> >
> >(1) Everybody agrees that "voiceless fricatives" constitute a

natural

> >class. It's less certain if "non-glottalised voiced consonants"

(or

> >something similar) do.

Well, they do in registrogenesis.

> True, but we have to explain that anyway to account for the Grimm-

shift *d

> > *t. If my scenario is true, then Verner's law can be formulated

for

> PGmc. as "if [+high tone] then [-voiced] -> [+voiced]". It

follows that *t

> and *dh contrasted as [-voiced] vs. [+voiced], while *t and *dh

together

> contrasted as [-something] to *d [+something], while *d was

neutral as to

> the feature [voiced] (and therefore not affected by Verner's law).

I've still not found any examples of tonal features affecting the
phonation of plosives. I'm not even sure that tones _acquire_
glottalisation features, whereas they are a popular explanation of
tonogensis.

Richard.