Indo-European Phonology

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/15/99 4:53:39 AM, Bomhard at aol.com wrote:

<<4. The so-called Germanic and Armenian "consonant shifts" (in German,
"Lautverschiebungen"), which can only be accounted for very awkwardly within
the traditional framework, turn out to be mirages.  Under the revised
reconstruction, these branches (along with the poorly-attested Phrygian as
well) turn out to be relic areas.>>

First, thanks for the terrific summary that you've given us here.

As to the reconstructed obstruents as applied to the German/Armenian "shift,"
Philip Baldi explained and endorsed it in Comrie's "The World's Major
Languages" not 40 pages from where Hawkins postulated that shift might be due
to "the speakers of a fricative-rich language with no voiced stops making
systematic conversions of IE into their own nearest equivalent..." in a prior
nonIE tongue.
Of course, he also mentioned the usual 30% non-IE lexical substrate.

Baldi states that the retention of the German/Armenian archaism is the logical
result if we "recognize the uneveness of the records and the fact that some of
the languages split off from Proto-Indo-European long before others did,..."
citing Bomhard (1984).

My question is can the archaism only represent a early split-off? Aren't there
other explanations for the retention of the glottalized stops?

One that comes to mind is that German and Armenian were languages that were
not split-off but cut-off from at the time PIE was somewhat cohesive.
Historically this would mean that that for example Germanic did not move
("split-off") but rather that it stayed in place but was not in contact with
changes that were happening in the rest of IE.  The linguistic split would
have happened afterward over time as development proceeded that created the
other IE languages.  And if dropping glottalizing was "an innovation" that was
transferred from one IE language to another (let's say as a fashion) then we
would not necessarily say that German split-off earlier, but that it was never
exposed to the spreading innovation.

I'd think archaic speech doesn't only happen because of an early split-off.
It could happen because innovations could not reach isolated areas.  The older
English that has been found on isolated islands of the Atlantic Coast in
America have not always happened because of the earliness of these
settlements, but because subsequent changes did not reach these outposts.

As to what could have cut Germanic or Armenian off from the mainstream, there
may be some candidates.

Regards,
Steve Long