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

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

>
> 2013/11/13, gprosti <gprosti@...>:
> >
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
> > <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@> wrote:
> >>
> >> 2013/11/13, gprosti <gprosti@>:
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
> >> > <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@> wrote:
> >> >>
>
> *Bhr.: What I meant by "chance" is:
> 1) every language has different words and these differ because they
> have different phonemes
> 2) statistically, some couples of words differ by just one phoneme
> 3) it's statistically possible that some of these (words differing by
> a singole phoneme) have - by chance - the same meaning

The question is *how* statistically probable it is that two words with the same meaning, which share five phonemes in the same sequence, are in fact two completely (historically) separate forms.

>
> Maybe You mean an *assimilation*, since the OHG term is du^sunt,
> thu^sunt (Tausend is in fact [t̺ʰaʊ̯zn̩t]);

Yes, that's what I should have said (thanks).

in this case, on the other

> side, I'd expect the same assimilation in diot 'folk', but I see
> nothing like that
>

Long-distance assimilation/dissimilation are examples of processes that don't necessarily spread through the whole lexical inventory of a language (in fact, it may be the norm for them to be sporadic).

Haplology is a similar type of process: e.g., standard Spanish shows the simplification of *tenisista to "tenista", but no haplology of "narcisista" to *narcista.