medial b

[llama_nom]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "ualarauans" <ualarauans at ...> wrote:
>
> In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell@> wrote:
> > the final
> devoicing rule (Auslautsverhärtung) doesn't apply 
when 'b', 'g', 'd'
> follow another consonant, so my guess for the nominative singular
> would be *Albs.
> 
> Yes, of cause. Thanks. Hence a question - how you pronounce this: 
> [alvs], [albs] or maybe even [alps]? Intervocalic –b- I like most 
to 
> have as [v], but what I like or dislike that's no argument. We 
have 
> Naubaimbair for November and a lot of Latin renderings like Liuva, 
> Erelieva etc., but what about –b- in the position you described, 
> i.e. after a consonant? And what is Silbanus for SILOUANOS – 
leaning 
> on Gothic silba? But this happened to be written by Romans as 
> Silva... Does the rule work only when –b- stands between two 
> consonants? And what is then the pronunciation? I guess it could 
be 
> again a question of chronology.

The final devoicing is prevented whenever 'b', 'd', 'g' come after 
another consonant.  Although I don't know any examples of the 
combination 'lbs', I think it can be assumed to have existed on the 
basis of words like 'skulds', 'gaþaurbs', 'gazds'.

According to Marchand, the Greek letter beta was a voiced bilabial 
fricative in the 4th c.  But a voiced bilabial plosive after [m]?  
The Gothic 'b' is modelled on this letter and used to transcribe 
beta in names.  Go. naubaimbair for Lat. november is consistent with 
the possibility that Go. 'b' was a fricative between vowels.  To be 
more cautious, we can probably assume at least that Go. 'b' was the 
closest thing to Lat. 'v' at the time the word was borrowed, 
although we can't tell whether they were an exact match.  If Gothic 
had no inervocalic [v], a bilabial fricative [B] may have been 
substituted.  If Gothic had neither intervocalic [v] nor [B], the 
closest match may have been a plosive, perhaps [b] or even [p] 
(depending on how Go. /b/ and /p/ were distinguished).

Latin transcriptions of Gothic names aren't very useful for this 
question, since medial 'b' and 'v' had fell together as a fricative 
in Vulgar Latin.  I don't know if this was generally bilabial (as 
still in the Iberian peninsula) or had become labio-dental (as in 
other modern Romance languages).  Presumably Gk. SILOUANOS reflects 
the ealier Latin pronunciation of 'v' as [w].  Either way, I think 
unfortunately we have to discount the evidence of spellings like 
Liuva (*Liuba), Erelieva (*Haíru-liuba?), Recciverga (?-*baírga).  
Similarly, the contraction of Go. *Sigis- to Lat. and Romance sis- 
can be explained in terms of Latin/Romance sound changes, cf. Lat. 
Arge- for Go. *Harja-.  Still, it might be reasonable to exclude a 
voiceless stop for Go. intervocalic 'g', cf. the transcription of 
Langobardic Sikenolf.

Initial 'b' seems not to be confused, but consistently spelt 'b', as 
far as I know, in Latin transcriptions of Gothic names.  This 
suggests that initially 'b' was a stop, something like [b] in 
Gothic.  This would agree with the treatment of Gothic initial 'g' 
and 'd', which are transcribed as Latin 'g' or 'c', on the one hand, 
and 'd' on the other.

Conclusion so far.  Comparison with other Germanic languages points 
to a phoneme /b/ realised as a voiced bilabial fricative [B] between 
vowels in Pre-Gothic, but [b] after a nasal [m].  The Latin evidence 
suggests that /b/ was also realised [b] in Gothic initially.  
Internal evidence (the regular alternation 'b' : 'f') suggests that 
some sound change affected /b/ after other consonants which 
prevented it in these positions from undergoing a later sound 
change, the final devoicing of [B].  This is usually considered to 
have been a change of Consonant + [B] > Consonant + [b].  This idea 
has the advantage of symmetry, at least.  Alternatively it's been 
proposed that final devoicing was prevented by some other mechanism, 
e.g. the voiced quality of the preceding consonant.

Short answer.  At the moment I'd say *Albs [alps], *Alb [alb], and 
Naubaimber ["nOBEmbEr], rabbei ["rab:i:], bindan ["bindan], bnauan 
["bnO:.an] or maybe ["bnO.an].  Using a full stop to represent a 
hiatus or syllable break.  I've changed a lot of my ideas about 
Gothic pronunciation recently after the reading I've been doing, and 
am liable to change them further if I find a better explanation.





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