From: stlatos
Message: 68202
Date: 2011-11-11
>Look at his publications on the website I gave: not all of the changes he posits can be real and regular (sticking just to the "laryngeal" changes for simplicity). The environment he gives for some are ill-defined or wrong (or include multiples, necessitating alt. or irreg. changes). I've already given many specifics, but you can look for yourself if needed.
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" <stlatos@> wrote:
> >
> >
> > He's so intent on attempting to find a regular expl. he doesn't even try or mention an optional expl. Since analogy isn't a sound law, apparently he feels it can be irregular, but using analogy to expl. an obvious sound change is ridiculous.
> >
> > Short e and i merged in Gmc; for simplicity I'll assume they first became e . In this situation the fact that e+fric. (for so he knows the "laryngeals" to be) became e: for more than one fric. simply and obviously means that the same sound change or very similar sound changes applied to more than one fric. Invoking analogy for an environmental change makes no sense. That z > _ was optional shouldn't make any difference, at least to a linguist who is fully prepared to accept the nature and consequences of opt. changes.
>
> The problem here is not Lehmann's search for regular soundlaws, which is the correct methodology.
>
>Lehmann was one of the sharpest phonological bloodhounds of the last century, but like Feist and others he was thrown off the track by Ottmann's red herring, 'meed'. The peculiar phonology occurs only in West Germanic, and Old English <me:d> exists beside the expected <meord> (cf. Gothic <mizdo:>, etc.). This makes it highly plausible that 'meed' is a borrowing from Kuhn's Nordwestblock, and while this is of considerable interest for NWB studies, it has no direct bearing on the origin of native Germanic close */e:/.
>Look at the examples on the other website I gave: there are more Gmc. with zd > rd / d (such as "woad").