Re: Grimm 's Law fact or myth: Gessman (1990)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <G.and.P@...> wrote:

>
> > Grimm's Law, the `Germanic Consonant Shift," has evaporated.
>
> I seldom bother reading MKelkar, but happened to read this.
>
> At one level, Grimm's Law is simply a factual description

The languages are factual. Grimm's Law is not. It is theory of what
could have happened.


of the

> relationships between certain Germanic sounds, and other sounds in

other PIE

> languages. That relationship cannot "evaporate". I suspect, then,

that

> what is meant is that a particular theory about the origin of those
> realtionships has evaporated, and the author cannot think of any

other to


That is partially correct. Grimm's law has evaporated in Gessman's
(1990) view and not the languages which are collectively labeled as
"Germanic" by Indo European linguists. The languages like Enlgish and
German are facts but "Germanic" languages is not a fact and so is PIE.

The author has proposed another explanation through interaction with
local "substrates."

> replace it. And MKelkar has taken this as proof for his ideology.
>
> It all reminds me not to bother reading MKelkar.

You never did in the fist place. There was not a single word in that
post written by me. From my long presence here, what I have found is
many members are not able to take an objective view of anything
perhaps because they are used to taking subjective reconstructions as
factual description of history.

M. Kelkar

>
> Peter
>