Re: On the ordering of some PIE rules

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> On 2007-06-06 22:15, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > Spirantization (GL) fails after it (GL) applied? Please rephrase ...
> >
> > And besides, I read 'fails' as 'exception'. What am I
> > misunderstanding here?
>
> "Fails" in the long run, in the sense that PGmc. has voiceless stops
> (rather than fricatives) for PIE voiceless stops. The outcome of the
> interaction of two regular changes may look like one regular change
> with (regular, phonologically governed) exceptions. Whether GL was
> blocked after stops and *s or reversed after voiceless fricatives,
> the results are indistiguishable. It's also imaginable that *pt, *kt
> became *ft, *xt (with fricative allphones of *p, *k) prior to GL and
> then GL happened everywhere except after fricatives.

But I didn't ask you to explain what you meant by 'fails'. I wanted to
know if you could refute one way or another what I claimed all along,
namely that GL in the classical theory is a rule with an exception,
not whether you could couch classical GL in other terms.


Torsten