On 2008-04-02 20:52, tgpedersen wrote:
> Nice try. Kluge does not belong there. Firstly, it's logically
> detachable from Grimm/Verner,
It isn't, in my opinion, as it happened in the middle of the other
shifts and interacted with them. But of course I'm aware that Kluge's
Law (or rather the change*s* traditionally so labelled) is still
regarded as controversial, so if you leave it out, I don't mind. For me,
GL + VL entail Kluge's Law anyway.
> secondly, I hear that it occurs in Celtic too,
Well, the spirantisation of the voiced aspirates (one of the initial
stages of GL took place also in Proto-Italic, and changes highly
reminiscent of GL took place in Proto-Armenian. That's why I emphasised
the significance of the whole _complex_ of ordered changes, which is
uniquely Gwermanic.
> 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.
No, it only shows how poorly documented East Germanic is. What we have
is practically one text, translated from a foreign language and with a
very restricted lexical register. Still, it does contain _some_ words
that may display Kluge's Law; even <atta> (characteristically, a nasal
stem) is one of them.
Piotr