Re: a discussion on OIT

--- Richard Wordingham
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Andrew Jarrette"
> <anjarrette@...> wrote:
>
> > Weirdly enough for me is that I realized that one
> could argue that
> > although kentum velars are (hypothetically) more
> original than satem
> > palatals, the IE languages of the hypothetical
> eastern urheimat did
> > originally have kentum velars, as preserved in
> Bangani, and migrations
> > to the west (>Greek, Italic, Celtic, Germanic)
> occurred before these
> > velars were later palatalized in the east. This
> would then support
> > OIT.
>
> The problem then is that either satemisation has to
> occur over a very
> wide area (Central Europe to India) or you need a
> later expansion of
> Satem languages. There are two related types of
> problems with a later
> expansion (other than a West to East Aryan expansion
> - AIT!)
>
> (1) The satem languages are not very coherent - tree
> analyses don't
> easily find a satem group

We spoke about this earlier on the list --satemization
seems to be a spontaneous phenomenon. It happened in
Franco and Ibero Romance. In Italian and English there
was "chentumization" e.g. Italian cento, English
church, etc.
I think Iraqi Arabic also has "chentumization" e.g.
kalb > chalb
So centum represents the more archaic form and satem
the innovation

>
> (2) Greek and Germanic seem to have Satem
> affinities, and I've a
> feeling there are some Italic-Albanian affinities.
>
> Note that in most homeland theories, the homeland of
> non-Anatolian PIE
> ends up speaking a Satem language, demolishing:

There is the idea of the "innovating center" --note
common lexicon in Spanish and Romanian that is lacking
in French and Italian

>
> > Also, isn't it
> > often claimed that languages that remain nearest
> to a homeland tend to
> > preserve more archaic features (e.g. Italian among
> Romance
> > languages)-- Sanskrit and its descendants were the
> only ones to
> > preserve voiced aspirates, AFAIK.
>
> How is Italian more archaic than Romanian?

higher percentage of lexicon is from Latin, Romanian
has /kw/ > /p/. But Romanian does have some archaic
features

>
> The glottalic theory, of course, makes voiced
> aspirates an
> Indo-Iranian innovation.
>
> Richard.
>
>