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

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
wrote:

>
> On 2006-06-20 05:02, mkelkar2003 wrote:
>
> > Kelkar: What happens if those arrows are turned around? i.e. *f--
>p,
> > *b-->bh etc. I think the IH homeland would move away from

Germanic and

> > closer to non Germanic territory.
>
> Do you mean that if the original phonological system of PIE was

very

> similar to that of Proto-Germanic, Germanic must be located far

from the

> original homeland? How on earth does the one follow from the

other? In

> fact, the structure of the stop system tells you nothing about the

homeland.

I don't know what i was talking about here. I thought that would be
the reverse of Grimm's law.

>
> > Or why would Gamkrelidze and Ivanov
> > (who maintain an Armenian homeland) want to repeal it?
>
> They don't, and can't, repeal Grimm's Law understood as a pattern

of

> correspondences between Germanic and the rest of IE. That pattern

is

> treated by everybody, including G&I, as an empirical FACT, and so

a

> linguistic GIVEN. You can repeal earlier INTERPRETATIONS of it,

but if

> you follow the new interpretation offered by Hopper, G&I and

others, you

> have to propose something like the reverse of Grimm's Law for

branches

> other than Germanic and Armenian. The glottalic model has its

merits

> (e.g. it accounts for some strange phonotactic constraints

operating in

> PIE), but it loses with the traditional reconstruction of the PIE

stop

> system in terms of overall economy. The debate isn't over yet, but
> historical linguists are less enthusiastic about the glottalic

theory

> than they were a couple of decades ago, when at least it had the
> attractive air of a fresh start. I daresay it's become a little

stale by

> now. It hardly helps if some of its proponents simply run in

circles,

> repeating themselves in article after article. Here is an extreme

(but

> not exceptional) example:
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/2762
>
> > "However, contends Gamkrelidze, "recent evidence now places the
> > probable origin of the Indo-European language in western Asia."

In

> > deciphering numerous texts in dozens of ancient languages from

Turkey

> > and surrounding areas, it has become "necessary to revise the

canons

> > of linguistic evolution." Given a profundity of linguistic

evidence,

> > Gamkrelidze postulates that the homeland of ancient Indo-

Europeans

> > was, in fact, the ancient Near East."
>
> The evidence for locating the IE homeland in or around the Iranian
> Plateau, as proposed by G&I, is based mainly on "linguistic
> palaeontology" of the most vulnerable kind. They do argue that a

PIE

> with ejective stops would be typologically close to the modern

languages

> of the Caucasus, but what if PIE had no ejectives? (And of course

the

> Caucasus is not the only place in the Universe where ejectives

occur now

> or occurred in the past).
>
> > "Gamkrelidze has also called into question the paths of

transformation

> > into the historical Indo-European languages. Grimm's assumption

(known

> > as "the classical system") was that Germanic, Armenian, and

Hittite

> > daughter languages underwent a systematic sound shift and

Sanskrit

> > remained faithful to the original consonants."
> >
> > <http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1674658>
> >
> > Very intersting! Linguistics and politics going hand in hand.
>
> What's so political about it?

The debate is between Grimm's law and Glottalic theory. Depending on
which way you go would dramatically alter the reconstructed
vocabulary. Let us read some more "nonsense"

"This contention is illustrated in the evolution of the English
word "cow" (in German, Kuh). In Sanskrit, the word for "ox" is ganh
and in Greek it is bous. In the classical system, this word is *gwou
in PIE, where the new system described claims it to be *kwou1.
Obviously, the classical system describes a word very much similar
to the Sanskrit, where Gamkrelidze puts it closer to Germanic. Says
Gamkrelidze, the new system "has brought the protolanguage closer to
some of its daughter languages without resorting to such difficult
phonological transformations as that from /g/ to /k/."

Whether it is *kwou or *gwou is more than just a matter of
intellectual curiosity, right? I have already quoted BArber (2001)
to the effect that who changed what and how has an impact on
deciding the homeland and hence the history of real people.

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1674658

"In revising the consonant system of the Indo-European
protolanguage, Gamkrelidze has also called into question the paths
of transformation into the historical Indo-European languages.
Grimm's assumption (known as "the classical system") was that
Germanic, Armenian, and Hittite daughter languages underwent a
systematic sound shift and Sanskrit remained faithful to the
original consonants. Gamkrelidze contests--and, in fact, reverses--
that idea. The diverging pathways of linguistic transformation,
Gamkrelidze says, can now be traced back to a convergence in the
Indo-European protolanguage and its homeland. "


"And its homeland" "And its homeland" "And its homeland"

So if you go for *kwou, Germanic can somehow be clubbed together
with Armenian, Hittite and then it must bolster the G & I theory.
May be that is why they keep repeating it ad nauseaum as you have
indicated in the earlier post. By the way, auto plagiarism is like
murder in academia.

M. Kelkar

>