Not "catching the wind " , or, what ARE we discussing? Was (Query

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

>
> On 2008-04-02 17:24, george knysh wrote:
>
> > (4) What are these traits? The Grimm consonental shift
> > is certainly one. There are others.
>
> The Grimm/Verner/Kluge complex of changes is uniquely Germanic and
> can be conveniently regarded as the defining autapomorphy of the
> group.

Nice try. Kluge does not belong there. Firstly, it's logically
detachable from Grimm/Verner, secondly, I hear that it occurs in
Celtic too, and thirdly, Kuhn was only able to find half a dozen
geminates in the Gothic Bible, so Kluge, or substrate from a
geminating language didn't happen in East Germanic. It's a NWGermanic
thing, it becomes increasing common in the North and West Germanic
languages over time, and the Chatti, a local non-Germanic, non-Celtic
tribe has geminates in the few opaque words we know of it. Everything
points to Chattic substrate.

> Any language ancestral or related to the historically known Gmc.
> languages but not showing the operation of those changes would then
> be non-Germanic by definition (it might be "pre-Gmc." or
> "para-Gmc.").

As I said, leave out Kluge, then it's true.

> > (5) Which trait or cluster of traits is it necessary
> > to assume as existing before a language or dialect may
> > be labeled "Germanic" say ca. the beginning of the
> > common era?
> > (6) Are we focusing primarily on the Grimm shift, and
> > on the contention that it was initiated by the people
> > of the Przeworsk culture, when we are discussing the
> > "genesis" of Germanic (that's what I thought), or is
> > something else involved, viz. other traits?*****
>
> One has to remember that sound changes, even quite dramatic ones, do
> not have to depend on external factors or be correlated with
> historical events so importannt that they should leave their
> signature in the archaeological record. Phonological shifts may
> happen during a period when the social, political, religious and
> cultural life of a linguistic community is fairly stable (cf. the
> Great Vowel Shift in English).

That opinion is not uncontested
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_vowel_shift
cf. also Bloomfield's discussion of Dutch dial. huis vs. mu:s.
You seem to forget that before the discovery of the Americas, England
didn't have, and wouldn't have benefited much from, an attitude of
splendid isolation. Trade with Europe was *the* trade, not a left-hand
affair.


Torsten