Re: IE *p and *b

ph- is a result of *sw- lenition in Irish (*swesor > fiúr), not of
*sp-. Sp- was never lenited in Irish neither now nor in Old Irish.

Róman

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
wrote:

>
> On 2007-12-09 11:15, meska_jd wrote:
>
> > One of characteristic changes in Celtic was *gW > b (*gWow- >

bou-

> > "cow) and falling with of aspirated and plain consonants after
> > which consonant system becase balanced where every voiced

consonant

> > had a voiceless correlate. Development of *p has thrown the

system

> > in confusion again as *b was left without a pair. It is rather
> > unusual that a balanced system would be taken out of balance

without

> > any good reason.
>
> Hm. My experience is that even nicely balanced systems can be

thrown out

> of balance for no obviously good reason. Languages are vast

systems and

> we don't always understand their somewhat chaotic dynamics. Late

Middle

> English had a most satisfactory, perfectly symmetrical arrangement

of

> long vowels (i:, e:, E:, a:, O:, o:, u:), and then the Great Vowel

Shift

> came along and messed it up.
>
> > I do strongly believe that *p behaviour means a bit
> > more than many people usually suppose. Furthermore, later when
> > lenition process started all medial -j- and -w- have been lost,
> > meaning *p disappearance was very likely to happen due to

similar

> > mechanism.
>
> I wonder if it's significant, but initial *p was lost earlier

before *a

> (also from vocalised laryngeals and resonants) than in other

contexts.

> We have various early spellings showing some kind of residual
> consonantal reflex ([h], [B]) in other contexts, but never

before /a/.

> It seems that the lexical diffusion of *p > *P > h > zero was

sensitive

> to the openness of the following segment, and was spearheaded by

words

> in *pa-, like pre-Celt. *pate:r.
>
> > Regarding *sp-: there are no native words with *sp- in Irish,

all of

> > them are either Latin or English borrowings.
>
> What about the 'heel' word, OIr. seir (acc.du. di pherid, showing

the

> outcome of lenition), Wel. ffêr 'ankle'? The root is usually given

as

> *sperh(1?)- 'tread, kick away' (Hitt. ispa(:)ri, Skt. spHuráti,

Lith.

> spìrti, and even if one insists on a PIE reconstruction with

aspirated

> *pH (see LIV, p. 585), I would not expect different reflexes of

*sp and

> *spH in Celtic.
>
> Piotr
>