Re: [tied] Re: Grimm's Law is about to expire (Collinge 1985, p. 26

From: Brian M. Scott
Message: 47873
Date: 2007-03-15

At 4:49:34 AM on Thursday, March 15, 2007, Richard
Wordingham wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mkelkar2003"
> <swatimkelkar@...> wrote:

> I've converted the character entities (ʰ) that
> sneaked in to nornal Cybalist notation (H).

[...]

>> "http://ablauttime.blogspot.com/2004/10/those-old-ie-sound-laws.html

>> "I've spent the better part of the last two days (or so
>> it seems) either explaining to students how Grassman's
>> Law can possible explain exceptions to Grimm's law when
>> it didn't even occur in Germanic or trying to convince
>> them that there is some reason that they should learn
>> what Grimm's Law, Verner's Law, Grassman's Law, and the
>> Great English Vowel Shift are.

> He should have thrown in some examples from Latin, which
> has distinct reflexes for word-initial voiced stops and
> voiced aspirated stops.

>> If one needs two more laws to explain exceptions to an
>> earlier law then its best to get rid of all three and
>> replace them with the ancient Indian tradition.

>> "A different analytical approach was taken by the ancient
>> Indian grammarians. In their view, the roots are taken to
>> be underlying /trikH/ and /tapH/. These roots persist
>> unaltered in [trikH-es] and [tapH-ein]. But if an /s/
>> follows, it triggers an "aspiration throwback" (ATB), in
>> which the aspiration migrates leftward, docking onto the
>> initial consonant ([tHrik-s], [tHap-sai])."

> Ancient Indian grammarians' views on Greek morphology?

> Grassmann's law also explains the stop consonant of the
> reduplicating syllable in Greek and, apart from the Law of
> Palatals, in Sanskrit. The Indian tradition also fails to
> explain why ATB applies to a voiced consonant in Sanskrit
> and a voiceless consonant in Greek (or does Grassmann's
> law affect any voiceless aspirates in Sanskrit?)

> Finally, you are still left with correspondences such as

> Skt _bandHati_, Greek _pentHeros_, English _bind_

> I don't see how the Indian tradition explains such
> correspondences. It isn't just Germanic which testifies to
> an initial voiced aspirate in such words - Latin does to,
> e.g.

> Skt _budHna_, Greek _putHme:n_, English _bottom_ (OE
> _boþm_ is more representative of Germanic - I'm not sure
> of the relevance of the surname _Botham_), Latin _fundus_.

<Botham> is locative in origin, from place-names derived
from OE <boþm>.

There are apparently also a few diaspirate roots that have
'diaspirate' reflexes in languages that distinguish aspirate
from non-aspirate in both positions; the one that I've seen
is Oscan <feihuss> 'walls' (from *dHeigH-), where /f/ and
/h/ are identifiably from *dH and *gH.

[...]

Brian