From: tgpedersen
Message: 52542
Date: 2008-02-09
>Why is that?
> On 2008-02-09 00:11, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > ?? In what sense convergent?
>
> A _similar_ pattern of dissimilation, but not _the same_ historical
> process. Grassmann's Law in Greek is not only younger than the
> devoicing of aspirated stops in the language, but even younger than
> the lenition of *s > h.
> >> but independent change in each case, not a homology. Italic,But suppose Grassmann's law was initially a phenomenon of zero degree
> >> Germanic and Armenian preserve DH...DH roots and the contrast
> >> between them and D...DH.
> >
> >
> > I know all that, as I desperately tried to communicate in the
> > posting. The idea was: suppose the <aspirated>V<aspirated> ->
> > <unaspirated>V<aspirated> rule was active synchronically in all of
> > PIE, Greek and Sanskrit. That it doesn't exist in the rest of IE
> > would mean that it ceased operating there.
>
> Ana a lost contrast was restored? Grassmann's Law means the falling
> together of *D...DH and DH...DH. If a root like *dHegWH- had
> undergone dissimilation already in PIE, yielding *degHW-, we would
> get Skt. dáhati (correctly), but neither Lat. foveo:, nor even Gk.
> tépHra: come out as expected. Greek would actually require a
> cancellation of Grassmann's Law, *degWH- becoming *dHegWH- again,
> then aspirate devoicing (*tHekWH-), and finally Grassmann's Law once
> again, yielding *tekWH- > tepH-. And how would the "no-Grassmann"
> branches have managed to restore *dHegWH-, leaving e.g. *g^embH-
> unaffected? How did they know which *D- was original and which had
> resulted from aspirate dissimilation?