Etruscans

[Stanley Friesen]

At 10:26 AM 3/25/01 +0000, Douglas G Kilday wrote:

>Your proposal was /trosy-/ > /trohy-/ > /trooy-/ with later loss of /y/ when
>not re-analyzable as suffixal. The first form, being foreign, evaded your
>postulated metathesis, so no /troys-/. Now if memory serves, Archaic
>Corinthian preserves <hw> (i.e. heth + waw) for earlier */sw/, so I'm not
>about to disagree with your general treatment of lengthening. I just don't
>like the necessity of invoking foreignness in order to evade one
>sound-change, then insisting on "naturalization" in order to obey subsequent
>changes.

Why, as far as I can see this happens all the time.  A borrowed word ceases
to be perceived as foreign after a few generations, after which time it is
subject to any *subsequent* (or even concurrent) sound changes in the
borrowing language.  Consider for instance ME 'chief', borrowed from
Medieval Norman French and then subjected to the Great Vowel Shift just
like a native English word.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net