Re[2]: re Voiced affricatives in English dialects [was: re [tied] A

At 5:02:04 AM on Monday, September 8, 2003, tgpedersen wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Gordon Selway
> <gordonselway@...> wrote:


>> Not sure what to make of this. I''m not sure how far the
>> voicing of stops which is one of the features of the
>> change form Brittonic to Welsh (eg Lat. 'medicus' (?or Br
>> 'medicos') -> W 'meddyg') was areal. And I'm certainly
>> not suggesting that 'language is in the genes'!

> If a general 'voicing of the stops' is what it is. I
> proposed that it might an old Germanic dialect difference
> going back to Verner.

In this case it's a British phenomenon, not Germanic, and
it's not precisely a general voicing of stops. It's a
voicing of medial and final (but not initial) unvoiced stops
and an accompanying lenition of voiced stops to voiced
fricatives. Similar but not identical changes occurred in
Continental Vulgar Latin.

Brian