[tied] Re: Grimm's Law is about to expire (Collinge 1985, p. 267, T

From: mkelkar2003
Message: 47888
Date: 2007-03-16

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> On 2007-03-15 19:10, mkelkar2003 wrote:
>
> > Does the chronology of attestation make a difference?
>
> No, it doesn't. What matters is the pattern of correspondences, not
> their age. Even languages not attested before the second millennium
C.E.
> (like Albanian and Lithuanian) are important for the reconstruction of
> the protolanguage. Every "daughter" preserves some useful information
> lost in some of the other branches (including Indo-Iranian).
>
> > b and dh in
> > Sanskrit came first, p and th in Greek came second and b and d in
> > Germanic came third.
>
> How do you figure that out? In terms of written documentation, Greek is
> surely older than Sanskrit,

Don't forget the Hittie inscriptions.

<http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Grimm's%20Law%20vs.%20Glottalic%20Theory>

"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."

It just seems improper to club a lately attested Germanic together
with the first to branch of Anatolian and at the same time argue that
an equally old Sanskrit escaped this transformation.



and the Germanic languages (Old Runic,
> Gothic) not so dramatically younger (your estimate of the distance,
3000
> yrs, is exaggerated by about an order of magnitude). And why do you
> ignore Italic, attested much earlier than Germanic?
>
> > So PIE should have *b, *dh; *b, *dh> p, th in Greek and *b, *dh> b, d
> > in Germanic. So the family tree would be PIE--->Sanskrit--->branching
> > off into Greek and Germanic.
>
> Unfortunately for this scenario, Gk. initial /p/ doesn't correspond to
> Skt. /b/ or Gmc. *B except when an aspirated stop follows. Why should a
> *b have become /p/ in this environment? (And, while we're at it, why is
> *b otherwise so rare?) By contrast, the motivation for Grassmann's Law
> is clear and natural.
>
> Piotr


Agreed. Let us start over again. Gramkrildze proposed the glottalic
theory to get the homeland moved to eastern Anatolia. Good for him!

What should MY PIE stops be in order to make India (Pakistan and
Bangaldesh) as its homeland?

Hmmm.

"In the original Proto-Indo-European proposal, there was a fourth
phonation series, aspirated /pʰ, tʰ, kʲʰ, kʰ, kʷʰ/, assumed to exist
by analogy with Sanskrit, which at the time was thought to be the most
conservative Indo-European language."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottalic_theory

I notice that Gamkrildze has got these back in in the Table titled
"Proto Indo-European plosives recent." He has also got rid of the
voiced stops which are abundant in Sanskrit. I know from reading the
debate between Grimm/glottalic that the farther PIE gets from Sanskrit
the closer its homeland gets to India.

Sanskrit has the following consonants already:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit#Consonants

So what is not there in Sanskrit that can be added to PIE? How about
labialized dentals such as tw, twh, dw, dwh etc.


M. kelkar
>