23-09-03 02:20, etherman23 wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
> <piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:
>> 13-09-03 14:59, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen wrote:
>>
>> > This is at variance with d > t in the earliest of the Iranian
>> > loanwords in Armenian.
>>
>> The same argument works for Germanic (early Celtic and eastern
>> loans in Germanic show b, d, g > p, t, k).
>
> Could these have been borrowed before the p > b shift?
That would require a most unlikely conspiracy: several different
languages would have had to change their /p/'s into /b/'s (etc.)
independently after imparting their loans to Germanic. To make things
worse, those shifts would have to be very recent: Gmc. *ri:k- shows the
effect of *e: > i: in Celtic, and the 'hemp' word can't have been
borrowed before hempen products or the plant itself reached Northern
Europe (probably about the 6th c. BC, courtesy of the Scythians). Greek
has <baite:> for Gmc. *paido:. Would you be prepared to defend the view
that there was a change of *p > Gk. b during the first millennium BC?
Piotr