--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> On 2009-02-24 21:44, Andrew Jarrette wrote:
>
> > Is it possible that *g in Common Slavic, or at least Proto-Slavic, was
> > actually [G] rather than [g]? After all, that could explain why it
> > becomes /h/ (actually _voiced_ /h/, no?) in Czech, Slovak, and
> > Ukrainian
>
> ... and Upper Sorbian. It's a breathy-voiced glottal glide, very much
> like English /h/ between vowels, as in <behind>. Note that when /h/
> undergoes final or assimilatory devoicing in Czech, the result is /x/,
> and the pronunciation of <sh> varies dialectally between /sx/ and /zh/.
>
> > (and Belorussian? On Wiki it says that Belorussian <h> is
> > pronounced [G]),
>
> Yes, as also in the southern dialects of Russian. And it has a palatal
> counterpart, /G'/.
>
> and why its palatalized form is /Z/ rather than /dZ/.
>
> Not impossible. However, palatalised *zg yielded *z^3^, with a voiced
> affricate. Perhaps *[g] and *[G] were positional allophones.
>
> > Later developments such as the second palatalization might have
> > operated after a *[G] was hardened to [g], and therefore led to
> > phonemes such as /dz/ in some dialects.
>
> Yes, that would explain why the languages which have /h/ for *g show
/z/
> as the result of the second palatalization even if they have /dz/ of
> other origin, e.g. from *dj (well, Slovak has eliminated _all_
traces of
> the second palatalisation when the voiced velar was affected).
>
>
This all leads to some major questions by me. Did the modern Greek
voiced fricatives /v/, /D/, /G/, indicated by the Greek equivalents of
the letters <b>, <d>, and <g>, arise from original voiced plosives, or
were they always fricatives even in ancient Greek? If they only
became lenited to fricatives in the course of evolution to modern
Greek, I can understand this happening medially between vowels or
resonants or vowels and resonants, but initially I wonder what would
cause it, because all too often the preceding word would end in a
consonant (e.g. nom. sg. -os, -is, -us, acc. sg. -om, -im, -um, -a:m,
nom. pl. -o:s, -ejes, -ewes, -âs, acc. pl. -o:ns, -ins, -uns, -a:ns,
gen. sg. -eis/ois, -eus/ous, -a:s, dat. pl. -obhos, -ibhos, -ubhos,
-a:bhos, instr. pl. -obhis, -ibhis, -ubhis, -a:bhis, etc. and many
verb endings as well), so it would be in the same leniting environment
as medially, and therefore might be expected to remain a plosive. So
if initial voiced fricatives were not original in Greek, how did they
arise?
This makes me wonder whether PIE (*b), *d, *g were really originally
voiced fricatives. After all, as I have argued above, Proto-Slavic *g
from *g(W) beside *g(W)H could possibly have been [G] rather than [g],
and this pronunciation may have been inherited rather than evolved.
But then why would voiced fricatives become voiceless plosives in
Germanic and Armenian. Nevertheless, even in Germanic what are now
voiced plosives in many modern languages, PGmc *b, *d, *g, are
generally agreed to have been originally voiced fricatives in most
positions (or is this not generally agreed upon?), so it would seem
that the normal course of development is to go from voiced fricative
to voiced plosive, rather than voiced plosive to voiced fricative.
However the Romance languages do show the opposite direction with
medial voiced plosives (but they even originally could have been
voiced fricatives medially in Latin, though the writing does not show
this distinction. At least some Latin intervocalic *b and *d
definitely go back to earlier *[B](if not *[v]] and *[D] from original
*[f]/[bilabial f] and [T] from Italic *ph and *th from PIE *bh and
*dh, so it is possible that in Latin these medial voiced consonants
were actually fricatives, and could go back to original voiced
fricatives in Indo-European.
Then *bh, *dh, and *gh could differ from *b, *d, and *g by being
exploded voiced consonants, i.e. exploded voiced plosives. These
would be devoiced and become (exploded>) aspirated voiceless plosives
in Greek and Italic, while in Germanic they would become voiced
fricatives. However again the Gmc development of PIE *b, *d, *g would
be unexplained, unless PIE *[B], [D], [G] early became plosives in Gmc
(as these sounds later became in Gmc, but of different origin, from IE
*bh, *dh, *gh), differentiated from the exploded or aspirated voiced
plosives, subsequently voiceless plosives, differentiated from voiced
fricatives.
All of this may well be erroneous speculation, but I really wonder why
so often a *g seems to become [G] (in many Slavic languages, and, if
Torsten is right, in Dutch). I always tend to feel that it would be
more natural to start out with [G] and then make this the easier [g].
Of course, [g] may only seem easier to me because I grew up with this
sound, whereas other people may have grown up with an inherited [G].
But if [G] was inherited, was it changed from an earlier *[g], or was
it original, from the earliest PIE, perhaps from the earliest speech?
If it was original, then what was the nature of *g and *gh in PIE?
Was *g a voiced fricative, while *gh was a voiced aspirated (breathy
voiced) plosive? Or if *g truly was a voiced plosive, why did it
become [G] in many languages? And is Dutch [G] inherited or
innovated, in which case the change [g]>[G] is common and natural,
more common and natural than this English-speaker would expect? (And
which process would then explain the modern Greek voiced fricatives,
even though I don't understand why it should happen, at least in
initial position, since it seems to be going against the current, to
this English-speaker.)
Andrew