*p>f Revisited (+: IE and Etruscan)

[Adolfo Zavaroni (Reggio Emilia, Italia)]

Fri, 5 Mar 1999 00:19:57 EST Steve Long wrote,

> Returning my question about Why *p>f?:
> The answer most commonly given related either to social
> causes or in a certain case to some tendency towards aspiration.

> There is another explanation however.  It suggests that Germanic
> seems "archaic" not because it split-off early as Miquel suggests
> above, but because it emerged very late.  And it explains p>f not as
> a "sound shift," but as a fundamental part of the conversion
> from a non-IE to an IE language by German speakers.

> John Hawkins in Bernard Comrie's The World's Major
> Languages (1987) (p.70-71) puts the general case for this,
> using a migration theory:
> "At least two facts suggest that the pre-Germanic speakers
> migrated to their southern Scandanavian location sometime before
> 1000BC and that they encountered a non-IE speaking people
> from whom linguistic features were borrowed that
> were to have a substantial impact on the developement
> of Proto-Germanic."

Who is interested in the shift p > f has also to take into consideration
the usual variance or exchange  p / ph / f in Etruscan (from the VII
century B.C.) and in its cognate Raetic (no far from Germany!). The
connection with the Lautverschiebung (p > f) was already seen by G.
Bonfante in "Studi Etruschi" 51, 1983.

As I doubt that this is the place where it is possible to discuss if
Etruscan and IE are "genetically related", I just say that I will send
GRATIS  my (heavy: 440 pages including wide notes apparatus) work I
DOCUMENTI ETRUSCHI (in Italian, 1996) to them who request it to me. I
tried to interpret the Etruscan inscriptions supposing a root alliance
with German, Latin and Italic IE ancient dialects, while the link with
Celtic languages appears to be minor (no lexical link with the Hittites
of V. Georgev, but some likeness in using clitics and noun declension
endings: e. g. see  F. R. Adrados, "Etruscan as an ie. anatolian (but
not hittite) language", in `Journal of Indo-europeans Studies', 1989, p.
363 ff. and, more convincing, F. Bader, "Comparaison typologique de
l'itrusque et des langues indo-europiennes", in "Studi Etruschi" 56,
1989-1990). However Etruscologists as Helmut Rix and Carlo de Simone
could not accept most of these interpretations.

Adolfo Zavaroni
adolfoz at tin.it