Re: [tied] Re: park, was *pVs- for cat

At 4:36:13 PM on Tuesday, July 31, 2007, Richard Wordingham
wrote:

[...]

> Didn't one of the early Irish saints advise that <p> could
> be pronounced as a combination of /b/ and /h/? (I can't
> remember the details.)

I don't know about that, but Jackson mentions that a native
/p/ arose secondarily when syncope brought together /b/ and
/h/. However, he thinks that mastery of /p/ in loanwords
began considerably earlier, at least in some places, likely
even overlapping the early period when <Patricius> was first
borrowed as <Cothriche>.

> This strongly suggests that early Old Irish lacked /p/ in
> normal speech.

Certainly Primitive Irish must have done so; as I read
Jackson, even early Old Irish (say ~700 CE) probably already
had it.

Brian