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

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

> 11-08-03 00:16, Richard Wordingham wrote:
>
> > I've still not found any examples of tonal features affecting the
> > phonation of plosives.
>
> Whereas _stress_ may affect phonation in a Vernerian way, see Eng.
> <é[ks]ercise> vs. <e[gz]ért>, <an[gz]íety> vs. <án[kS]ious>, <lú[kS]

ury>

> vs. <lu[gZ]úrious>. The voicing of original /s/ and /tS/ after an
> unstressed syllable (as in <matches>, <gallows>, <Norwich>) and in
> function words (<was>, <is>, <as>, <his>) is also Verneroid.
>
> I'd formulate the voicing rules for Germanic fricatives in the

following

> way:
>
> (1) An originally voiceless fricative followed by another obstruent
> assimilates to it with regard to phonation.
>
> (2) A cluster of voiceless fricatives always stays voiceless.
>
> (3 = Verner's Law) Elsewhere, fricatives stay fortis (voiceless)

when

> preceded by a stressed syllable or the initial boundary of a

lexical

> root; otherwise they become lenis (voiced).
>
> Rule 3 implies the rightward spread of some laryngeal feature that

(a)

> can serve as a phonetic correlate of stress, (b) can be employed to

mark

> the beginning of a word, and (c) can inhibit spontaneous voicing.

The

> feature [stiff vocal folds], as proposed by Page (1998), looks

quite

> plausible.
>

My two cents' worth: If you posit that some PGmc dialects separated
words with some kind of voiceless laryngeal (cf. the North German
Knacklaut, and Tacitus' mention of a Germanic speech norm of "murmur
fractum", which I would translate as "interrupted drone"), then that
voiceless laryngeal would form a cluster with the following fricative
and save it from voicing. But, and here is the nice part, in those
dialects that didn't have that word-separating laryngeal, the word-
initial fricatives would be voiced: German, Dutch, Southern English.
Which would place that internal Germanic separation all the way back
at the application of Verner; but I don't think anything speaks
against that.

Another example of voicing of fricatives where it shouldn't have
happened: English pronouns and demonstatives: thou, there etc, D for
expected T; Scandinavian in exactly the same words du, der etc, d for
expected t (but I find in Rudbeck (1600's) which I'm reading 'thin'
(normally 'din'), 'then' (for ('den')).

Torsten