From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen
Message: 26018
Date: 2003-09-25
On Mon, 22 Sep 2003, etherman23 wrote:
[On voiceless aspirates]
> I have to disagree. Unless, of course, you can come up with
> conditioning environments in the various daughter languages that
> would account for aspiration sometimes correlating to Sanskrit
> aspirates and sometimes not (and sometimes both aspirated and
> unaspirated forms existing). It looks totally chaotic to me.
I had to dig for it, but here it is: Paul Elbourne has formulated the
following fine law for Greek: th > t /[+cons, +cont]__ (Historische
Sprachforschung 111, 1998, 1-30, esp. 22). If applied at a time when *dh
is still voiced, and even syllabic sonants are classified as continuants,
it makes regular forms out of pátos/póntos (: pánth-), pórtis (Skt.
prthuka-, Arm. ort'), platús (: prthú-), ostéon (: ásthi), sta:- (:
stha:-), stégo: (: sthag-), sup. -isto- (: -is.t.ha-).
If the connection between Gk. aspaíro: and Ved. sphuráti is given up, the
deaspiration rule applies only to the dental /th/, whereas old /ph/ and
/kh/ are retained, even after /s/ at that: spharagéomai, skhízo:.
The law also allows for aske:thé:s 'unscathed' and 2sg oîstha 'you know'
(if applied before *-d- yielded /s/ here, or if analogical, then allowing
for -tha in the model), and 2sg passive -the:s (: Skt. 2sg mid. -tha:s).
Elbourne has written a ph.d. thesis about the matter from Oxford 1997 (not
seen).
Since it was only Greek that looked "chaotic", this conditioning has now
deprived us of all possibilities of dispensing with voiceless
aspirates in IE.
Jens