--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@> wrote:
>
> > At 5:06:45 PM on Wednesday, May 7, 2008, Richard Wordingham
> > wrote:
>
> > > His [Gesman's] 'demolition' argument seems to be that *t > /þ/
> > > cannot have induced *d > /t/ because after the first stage [t]
> > > survived in clusters such as /st/, /ft/ and /xt/. So, pray
> > > tell me, how did the High German consonant shift happen?
> > > (Pretty much the same clusters survive from Proto-Germanic
> > > in Old High German, except that /st/ has generally become
> > > /St/.)
> >
> > It isn't entirely clear *what* his argument is, because
> > Kelkar didn't copy the whole article. That's why I bounced
> > his post the last time he tried, and he still hasn't fixed
> > it.
>
> Gessman proposes an alternative set of changes to account for the
> observed facts. That does not disprove the traditional
> interpretation, so I think Mayuresh originally copied enough for us
> to get the drift. So, my original challenge to Mayuresh stands -
> why is the traditional interpretation as a changes in the
> development of PIE to Proto-Germanic fundamentally impossible
> whereas the High German consonant shift isn't?
>
This is the relevant paragraph in Gessmann's article:
'IMPLAUSIBLE PATTERN
The Germanic Consonant Shift, excluding Verner's Law which operated at
a somewhat later point, does not fit into any pattern of ch{'g. It is
impossible to blame an alien stratum for it - not because no suitable
one was around (about this we know nothing) but because the pattern of
the Shift itself is intrinsically incompatible with the principles of
heterostratic modification. Let us have a closer look what the
arsump{ion of heterostratic induction of the Shift would imply. We
shall start with the Aryan surd occlusives, to be represebted by *t.
We would have to assume that the hypothetic substratum for
superstratum) could not conceive of a [t] and therefore replaced it
with the nearest native phone, a [þ]. But, why then did it shift the
Aryan *d to a [t], occurring in the same phonetic environments as the
Aryan *t, which it presumably could not conceive of? One would
understand a parallel shift of *d to [ð] if that alien stratum should
not have been able to conceive of a [d] either. But then, the third
Aryan exclusive, denoted Sanskrit fashion, as *dh - whatever its
actual phonetic quality may have been in Aryan - was shifted to that
[d] which the hypothetic substratum could not conceive of either. No
alien stratum will arbitrarily shift the consonants of a newly
acquired language around in a circle. One can, of course, assume that
the Germanic Shift was carried out in several stages at different
times. But this would involve the assumption of a later second stratum
which, being capable to conceive of a [t] but not of a [d], shifted
the [d] to [t]. To explain the emergence of a [d] from the *dh would
then require the assumption of a still later, third substratum. That
is obviously too far-fetched to be considered seriously.
When we consider intrinsic causes for the Germanic Shift, we are not
much better off. A circular shift is as implausible as an internal
development within a speech community as it is is the action of
substratum. There is no conceivable reason why people should begin to
shift their consonants around in circles and there is no precedent of,
or parallel to, such shifting, except possibly in Armenian (though the
parallelism is not complete - Aryan surd occlusives become aspirate
occlusives, not constrictives). One may again try to explain the
"shift" by assuming consecutive stages. It is conceivable that the
Aryan *t had acquired an aspiration (of the same kind that /t/ has in
most modern Germanic languages) and the change of strongly aspirated
("afflate") occlusives into constrictives is not unheard of Evidently'
hovever, not all Aryan *t's acquired that presumed aspiration because
Aryan *t remains [t] in Germanic after Aryan *s and the new Germanic
[f] from *p and [x] from *k. Thus, in phonological terms, at that
stage, [þ] and [t] were allophones of the same /t/ phoneme, to be
defined as voiceless non-sonant.'
Gessmann has added the further restriction on linguistic rules
representing sound-changes, that they should be motivated either
externally, ie. by an adstrate, or internally.
I think Gess is right here. Partly because my version of the Grimm
test, that it is a generalization of a set of PIE allophones, stands
up under the test, and the traditional one and the pre-glottalized
one, which both imply it's a general shift in a set of PIE phonemes,
don't. And the reason is that I can motivate all the changes I
ptropose, partly as external (shibbolethization, imitation of Iranian
adstrate), partly as internal (paradigm regularization)
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/47124
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/47134
(note that as soon as Grimm's law is mentioned, MKelkar wakes up, for
whatever reason)
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/47145
Torsten