Re: On the ordering of some PIE rules

> > >
> > > > the same time we get rid of the whole Germanic sound shift
> > >
> > > Does that mean Grimm's law?
> > >
> > > M. Kelkar
> >
> > Yes. It means I'm making the claim that those changes that Grimm's
> > law is meant to explain were already present as variations
> > (allophones) in
>
> Excellent!

Out of curiosity: why do you find that excellent?

> That means Verner's law which is meant to explain exceptions to
> Grimm's law is gone to.

Not yet. I'm afraid I boasted a bit; since Verner is inseparable from
Grimm, I'd have to find a way to incorporate that as PIE allophones too.

> What do you think about the following?
>
> "Is it not possible that Verner's law of voicing is due to some
> other factor-for example the influece of another language on
> Germanic"(Thundy 1991, p. 1181, Future of Grimm's Law in the files
> section.

It's possible. The idea was proposed because Verner's recall some
similar phenomenon in the Baltic Fennic languages, but that turned out
to be unworkable. Of course there might have been other substrate
languages which would be difficult to say the least to recover.

> > pronunciaton in PIE sounds (phonemes), and that those variations
> > were generalized in the Germanic languages and the others were
> > generalized in other IE languages, eg Sanskrit

> > > > by replacing it with generalizations of allophones that were
> > > > already present in PIE.
>
> Based on the above can PIE be split into two? PWE Proto-West
> European from which Germanic, Celtic came out and PVE (Proto Vedic)
> from which Balto-Slavic, IIr, Armenian, Greek came out.
>

It's always been possible to do that, but the way I've proposed it PIE
will be so to speak be a mixed kentum/satem language which could
'degenerate' into a pure kentum or pure satem language anytime by
generalization of allophones. I rather see it this way: As
satem-generalization became popular in the center of the PIE area, the
conservative dialects in the periphery reacted by generalizing to
become kentum-languages. But the idea of satem languages being a
contiguous group and kentum languages splinter groups at the periphery
(Anatolian, Tocharian, Greek, Celtic, Italic, Germanic) has been
standard in many years.


Torsten