Re: [tied] Re: root *pVs- for cat

Hmmm, I think everyone agrees but we seem to be
talking past one another.
1. There are b/p alternating words in Western IE
(inlcuding Celtic) that may or my not go back to NWB
2. There are also b/p alternating words that are due
to Scots Gaelic devoicing and not consistently
taking this into account in the spelling. These are
false positives as far as NWB is concerned
3. As far as I kow, NWB is a phenomenon centered in
the lower Rhine valley. Correct me if I'm wrong.
4. Something interesting happened to both Scots Gaelic
and Icelandic that resulted in devoicing of voiced
stops and aspiration of unvoiced stops. This begs the
question of whether this phenomenon first occurred in
Scottish varities of Old Norse once spoken in the
Hebrides, and Caithness or whether it goes back to a
specific dialect of Old Norse from western Norway or
the Faeroe Islands. The Norwegians that settled in
Scotlands were generally from the west coasr of Norway
and arrived either via the Faeroe Islands or
Shetland/Orkney Islands or Isle of Man. So does this
phenomenon exist in W Norwegian, Faeroese or Norn? If
not, we may want to consider Pictish --although since
we don't really know much about it we may not find
anything.
So who can tell us about Faeroese, Norn and W
Norwegian?

--- "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:

> At 4:52:28 PM on Sunday, July 8, 2007, tgpedersen
> wrote:
>
> >>> If you want to ignore the NWBlock 'issue' (other
> people
> >>> call it a language), that is the way to go.
>
> >> The issue in question was whether some such
> language had
> >> anything to do with this ~ alternation.
>
> > If 'some such language' means NWBlock the answer
> is yes,
>
> No, it isn't: 'this ~ alternation' obviously
> refers
> to the specific words under discussion, namely, the
> ones
> that I dug up in answer to your question about the
> frequency
> of the phenomenon.
>
> >> In the case of the borrowings it obviously
> doesn't. Of
> >> the words that I mentioned, at most two are
> relevant, and
> >> quite possibly only one; observing that this is
> the case
> >> does not require ignoring anything.
>
> > And here 'some such language' can't mean NWBlock,
> since
> > you are considering only the examples from Celtic,
> you
> > supplied yourself,
>
> Of course I am: they were the subject under
> discussion.
>
> [...]
>
> >> Note also that if in fact it really is primarily
> a ScGael
> >> phenomenon, then the odds are very much against
> its having
> >> anything to do with NWB influence except in some
> tiny
> >> fraction of cases: not only should it appear
> already in EIr,
>
> > Why?
>
> Where do you think ScGael. came from? And just how
> recent
> do you imagine that some substratal NWB influence
> could have
> been exerted?
>
> [...]
>
> Brian
>
>
>

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