Re: Comments on Beekes' pre-Greek

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" <stlatos@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
>
> > http://www.indo-european.nl/ied/pdf/pre-greek.pdf
> >
> > Beekes tries to establish a phoneme inventory for his pre-Greek by
> > comparing suspected allophones ("interchanges") in sets of similar
> > loans from pre-Greek, eg. polis, ptolis "city", and posits an
> > "average" of the set of allophones as a pre-Greek phoneme, in this
> > case pY.
>
> > ("1a. pt may represent a single phoneme py, as we saw in B 1.
> > Exx. (Fur. 315ff): gnup- / gnupt- (gnupet-); kolúmbaina /
> > kolúbdaina; kíbalos / kíbde:s; lúpe: / lúpta; without variants
> > note króssophthon, sarúphthei~n.")
>
> Some dialects might have pt>p, etc., but how does that show that
> gnupetos or any other word with pt is borrowed?

That would be another explanation.

> > But he seems not to be aware of the fact that Greek pt is already
> > accepted as coming from proto-Greek pj. That means one could
> > envision another scenario for the loan of these two forms, namely:
> >
> > 1) proto-Greek loans pYolis from pre-Greek
> > 2) proto-Greek pj > Greek pt, pjolis > ptolis
> > 3) Greek borrows pYolis from pre-Greek as polis
>
> Or there was no borrowing at all.

Then you have to come with a different explanation for the occurrence
of the variants, like your dialectal pt > p.

> > The interesting thing is that he finds pre-nasalisation and
> > nasalisation (b / mb, ph / mb, ph / mb; t / nd / n, d / nd / n, th /
> > n; g / gg, kh / gkh, kh /gk), and further, that the labial
> > interchanges include w.
>
> Why?

Why what?


Torsten