Re: Comments on Beekes' pre-Greek

From: stlatos
Message: 49559
Date: 2007-08-18

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

The Greek change is independent of any borrowing. There would also
be kt>kk or k (ark(t)os); is that from borrowing?

> > > 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.

It's definitely not only in possibly borrowed words; gnupetos is
obviously from *gYonu 'knee' and *pet+ 'fall, fly' (in traditional
reconstruction) and some forms have pet>pte.

> > > 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?

What ev. is there for pre-nasalisation?