Re: IE *p and *b

On 2007-12-10 01:51, stlatos wrote:

> 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.

Well, _if_ there was an intermediate stage like xW, then the remaining
changes are pretty natural, especially *-xW- > *-GW- > -w-
intervocalically. But Celtic may have taken an alternative path: *p > *P

> h > 0 initially and *p > *P > *B > w/b intervocalically and in V_R

environments (which is the "official" scenario, BTW). If your claim of
*-sp- > *-skW- in OIr. is based on <fescor> alone, the evidence is weak
(even if it isn't a Latin loan), since the word is in general
diachronically unstable because of its structure. The *-skW- cluster
might well have resulted from the metathesis of *-kWsp- > *-pskW- >
*-skW- (or anything like that) in pre-Celtic.

Piotr