On ordering of some PIE rules

Here are three rules that are accepted to have applied in this sequence:

1 RUKI (Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic)
2 *-Ddh-, *-Dd- -> *-zd-, *-Dt- -> *-st- (Iranian, Balto-Slavic)
*-dhD- -> *ddh, *-dd- -> -dd-, *tt- -> *-tt- (Indic)
*-dht-, *dt-, *tt- -> *-ss- (Celtic, Germanic, Italic)
where D = dh, d, t
3 stop + consonant -> continuant + consonant (Iranian)


I propose instead

1 stop + consonant -> continuant + consonant (PIE)
2 RUKI (Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic)
3 *-Tt- -> *-st-, *-Dd- -> *-zd- (Iranian, Balto-Slavic)
*-Tt- -> *-tt-, *-Dd- -> *-dd-, *-Ddh- -> *-ddh- (Indic)
*-Tt- -> *-TT- -> *-ss- (Celtic, Germanic, Italic)
where T is thorn, the dental continuant, and D is edh, its voiced
counterpart
4 paradigm regularization by generalization of continuant resulting
from 1 (Germanic, Armenian)
5 paradigm regularization replacing continuants with stops, unraveling
rule 1 (every other language branch except Iranian).

Please not that T means different things in the different rules;
that's the consequence of being limited to ASCII.

The interesting part is that those phonemes that are supposed to be
the result of the Germanic and Armenian soundshifts are now present
within PIE as allophones of the phonemes they were supposedly the
result of a shift from. Ie the stop system of those two language
groups are a result of paradigm regularisation of the PIE inventory
*within* those two branches of PIE instead of as the result of a
soundshift. Also the unexplained affricatization of *-dht-, *-dt-,
*-tt- gets a natural explanation.
Perhaps rule 1 was limited in scope to before eg. dentals and the
state of affairs in Iranian was then a gradual extension to before all
consonants and in Germanic and Armenian an extension to all
environments of that spirantization rule, under Iranian influence. On
the other hand it is tempting to see the general PIE devoicing of stop
clusters as related to the Iranian trend away from voiced
continuant-stop sequences to unvoiced ones (Gatha-Avestan aoGDa,
later aoxta "he said".


Torsten