The palatal sham :) (Re: [tied] Re: Albanian (1))

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <petegray@...> wrote:

> >if there
> > were indeed loans taking place between IE branches, ...,
> > any reconstruction attempt we make of that elusive first language
> > will be garbled by mysterious alternations we can't account for.
>
> Not necessarily. Sometimes we are able to perceive the basic

pattern, and

> from that identify the loan word and discount it. Discounting

evidence in

> order to make a pattern is a dubious practice, but the other way

round -

> finding the pattern, then treating the aberration as a loan - is not
> uncommon. A typical example is the well attested pattern:
> medial *bh > b in Latin (ruber etc)
> Then the word rufus can be assumed to be a loan from another

dialect in

> which *bh > f medially. This is secure only because the basic

pattern is so

> well attested.
>
> A second example is Grimm's/Verner's law. Because this is so well
> established, we can assume that words in Germanic langauges that do

not show

> this are loan words.
>
> But where the patterns are not secure, doubts can remain.
>

Thank you very much.
And if you continue past the first year of linguistics, you'll even
get to exciting theories, such as the one in which all PIE roots
with /a/ are loans.


Torsten