Re: [tied] Latin barba in disaccord with Grimm's Law?

On 2006-06-19 06:32, junk554 wrote:

> Why does barba, the Latin word for beard, not begin with an f?
> According to the First Sound Shift or Grimm's Law, Indo-European bh-
> became f- in Latin and b- in Germanic.

No. Grimm's Law says nothing about Latin. It only says PIE *bH became
Germanic *B, so if the PIE prototype was *bHardhah2, everything is all
right on the Germanic side. If, on the other hand, it was *bardHah2,
then the Latin reflex is OK and we have what looks like a failure of
Grimm's Law. Balto-Slavic *b- in this word proves nothing either way, so
it's ultimately a question of Latin vs. Germanic. Sice PIE *b is rare
and there are a few possible (if rare) examples of sporadic Grassmannian
dissimilation in Latin, the reconstruction *bHardHah2 is generally given
preference.

Piotr
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Could you please explain what Grassmannian dissimilation is, and how it operates in *bhardhah2?  Also, is this word proof that IE really did have *a as a phoneme?

Andrew