Re: Grassmann's Law

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski gpiotr@ wrote:
> >
> > I'm afraid this is actually a huge misrepresentation, because
> > aspiration is a feature of VOICELESS consonants, not voiced ones. However, they
> > could be treated as "breathy voiced" or "murmured", which in IPA
> > have got a raised [*h\*] (the voiced counterpart of [*h*]).
>
> Breathy voice patterns phonologically with aspiration in
> Indo-European, especially in Indo-Aryan (Grassmann's Law).
> They are both phonetic manifestations of the distinctive feature [+ spread glottis], so
> there's no need to be pedantic about the distinction.
>
> > I strongly disagree. Grassmann's Law only applies to those IE languages
> > which have true aspirated stops in series III, so IMHO there's no
> > justification for reconstructing a "voiced aspirated" (or whatever other
> > name you choose) series in PIE.
>

While I still think aspiration is the stop series III is an areal feature of some IE languages, and hence not reconstructable for PIE, I've discovered a couple of possible examples of Grassmann's Law in Latin:

Latin pinguis < *pºngW-i- < traditional PIE *bhengh-u- 'thick, abundant'
Latin pra:tum < *prex-to- < traditional PIE *bhergh- 'high'