Re: IE *p and *b

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

>
> On 2007-12-09 22:32, stlatos wrote:
>
> > You're forgetting Armenian, which shows almost exactly the same
> > changes as Celtic (and also pH did not > f > xW > h, so asp. was not a
> > stage of this change). Along with other changes, this must show these
> > changes occurred in an area at a time when Celtic and Arm. were spoken
> > next to each other (next to Greek and Albanian).
>
> I hesitated about including Armenian and decided to wait until I find
> the time to think about it. Armanian has enough problems of its own.
> Olsen has suggested, for example, that there was a secondary *po- from
> *kWo- in Armenian which _also_ developed into (h)o-.

That's probably backwards; since p > f > xW etc., it's much more
likely kWo- > xWo- optionally (in both Celtic and Arm.) and kWr. >
xWr. > xWor > (h)or in Arm. There's no reason for r.>or after p, but
xWr. > xWor was reg in Arm. and Greek (since H3 = xW).

This kind of change before one specific V is also seen in opt. ka- >
ga- in both.

> Anyway, just as the
> Armenian consonant shift is reminiscent of Grimm's Law but not
> homologous to it, the behaviour of *p may be independent to the loss in
> Celtic but not _the same_.

It's not exactly the same, but it's definitely due to very old
changes to dia. in the same area. As I said, there are many other
changes and voc. shared. For p specifically, it's almost impossible
that both p > h but p > v > w between vowels and before N in _both_
languages would occur. Also, the intermediate xW isn't immediately
obvious as a stage in both, but -pt- > -xt- and (likely) -sp- > -sxW-

> -skW- in Old Irish and tp- > txW- > tkW- > tHkH- in Arm. make it

likely. The xW is also shown by the rounding in *perut! i 'last year'

> *xWiruTi > urid and probably *pedyo+ 'step, walking, journey' >

*xWidyo+ > huide in OIr.

> The changes in Celtic were still in progress
> in Roman times, and the geographical separation of pre-Armenians and
> pre-Celts is surely _much_ older.

There's no evidence that the Proto-Celtic changes I gave didn't
happen long ago (those which match Arm.). The existence of other
changes involving (the few remaining) p or xW that happened later
doesn't matter to this theory.

> > Also, sp- would be proven dif. than -sp- (in dif. syllables) if it
> > were true that *wekWspero+ > *wesfero+ > *wesxWero+ 'evening'. I'm
> > certain, but others just consider it a borrowing.
>
> Interesting. Pokorny has some uncanny-looking derivation for <ucher>,
> but does regard it as inherited. I think forms like *weskW(e)ro- have
> been proposed to account for it, but I can't check the details at the
> moment. The Leiden databases aren't working and I have very few books
> with me here.

One of the main reasons I proposed that order of changes is that
stop > 0 before sC seems to be very old in both Celtic and Italic.