Re: potto

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" wrote:

>
> > *prisipu > trisipu is trivial.
> > trisipu > *drisipu > lizifru
> >
> > There's no need for *risipru or *lrisipu.
>
> There are many possible rec.; the details aren't important.
>
> > I disagree. Real languages aren't Scrabble games.
>
> Then give me the details that are important.
>

Forms like the ones I quoted above are highly unlikely (if not impossible) due to phonotactic constraints (initial rhotic or lateral+rhotic).

> I just want to know how you can suggest Gip. lizifru \ trisipu < pr-
> or p-r- without needing l/t-alt. and then deny its existence a week later.
>
> > Technically speaking, I never said there was a "l/t" alternation nor l-
> > > t- like you proposed, but *only* d- > l-. Surely you misinterpreted
> > "pesebre > lizifru (G), trisipu (G)" as implying these fenomena.
>
> You said at one point d was borrowed as l and p was borrowed as l. > Thus, pesebre > lizifru or sim. I get that. Now, how do you

have lizifru > trisipu without l > t (or *lizipru > *lrizipu

> *trizipu etc., or *lizipru > *tizipru > *trizipu etc., or

whatever).

>

Not exactly. We've got *prisipu > trisipu > *drisipu > lizifru. I *never* meant p- > l- was a single-step shift like d- > l-.

> In my
> model, these words belong to two different linguistic varieties within
> the Paleo-Basque magma. One of these varieties was more "conservative"
> and so kept the voiceless plosives and got an apical sibilant, while the
> other lenied them and got a laminal sibilant.
> 
> I don't fully understand your expl., but what I see doesn't make sense with the ev. I have.
>

I think in the High Middle Ages there wasn't a single Basque language but rather a bunch of several varieties resulting from the contact between Paleo-Basque (with its own dialects) and Latin-Romance, in a creole continuum.