Re: Why there is t- in German tausend "thousand"?

---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <grzegorj2000@...> wrote:

>
> There are interesting forms, especially among Latin borrowings, with results of the Shift different than expected (and thus they can be compared with the "take" and "up" problems with the 1st Shift mentioned above).

> Romance (< Celtic) *pauta "paw" has yielded German Pfaute (with p > pf while -t- unchanged).
> Also Latin porta --> OHG pforta (not *pforza), modern Pforte "gate".
> Latin imputare --> OHG impfitōn "inoculate", now impfen, with -t- preserved but then irregularly omitted.

These are rather interesting - but rather than evidence for highly different datings of p > pf viz. t > z, they look like they would have been acquired from a Romance variety where medial stops had become voiced in certain positions (*pauda, *porda, *impudare)?

Rather than an actual sound change, any change of this sort also might have been a loanword substitution of some kind. The Romance voiced/voiceless and the Germanic fortis/lenis contrasts in stops are different, and cannot be linearly equated. If medial fortes in pre-HG were already aspirated (as suggested by their eventual affrication), perhaps the lenes were found here a more acceptable substitute for the voiceless unaspirated medials of VL.

_j.