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

On 2007-03-16 14:58, mkelkar2003 wrote:

> But let me ask you, is this criterion uniformely applied to group
> languages in families i.e they must have shared innovations and are
> all langauges that have shared innovations ALWAYS classified into one
> family. If so, why is Albanian hanging out like that?

Just because it lacks such tell-tale innovations shared with other
groups. The satem treatment of the *k^ series is a possible exception
(though some argue the satem shift may have happened independently in
several branches). Commonplace changes like the merger of *a and *o
don't count, since the likelihood of their independent occurrence is high.

Piotr