--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> On 2007-06-07 01:27, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
> No, "classical" GL is not a rule with an exception. No linguists
> uses the word "exception" in this way.
Aha. So whoever calls it an exception is not a linguist.
> The _blocking environment_ is part of the original formulation of
> GL, in itself fully regular, so the outcome of GL remains
> predictable.
That's right, GL has two in-built exceptions.
> Many rules include statements about the environment in which they
> _don't apply_. This only means that they are not completely
> unconditional.
That means have an inbuilt exception, like those Danish laws the last
paragraph of which states that the law doesn't apply in the Faroes and
Greenland. Exception.
But this is pointless. Let me illustrate what I mean on the subject of
IE stop + stop and spirantization:
Classical hypothesis:
PIE: nothing happens
Sanskrit: Bartholomae etc
Avestan: Stops sprirantize before all consonants
Germanic: Stops spirantize everywhere except after stops and sibilants
Old Irish: Stops spirantize before stops
Sabellic: Stops spirantize before stops
Latin: No change
Balto-Slavic: No change
In 4 out of the 6 branches chosen here stops spirantize to a bigger or
lesser degree, independently of eacg other. Why?
My hypothesis:
PIE:
Stops spirantize before stops
Dental spirants before stops become sibilants
Sanskrit: Despirantization by paradigm regularization
Avestan: Spirantization is generalized to before all consonants
Germanic:
Spirantization is generalized to everywhere except after stops and
sibilants
Old Irish: No change
Sabellic: No change
Latin: Despirantization by paradigm regularization
Balto-Slavic: Despirantization by paradigm regularization
In all branches there is either spirantization which is a continuation
or generalization of the spirantization in PIE, or there has been
despirantization caused by a general principle, paradigm
regularization, instead of exactly one of the myriad logically
possible rules. That's progress. Also, since I want to claim that both
the kentum/satem and dekem/taihun alternation was present already in
PIE, I've gotten halfway to that goal.
Torsten