The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread's Sequel

[dhok]

Note also that Grassmann's Law operates on word-initial Greek /h/ (from *s), which stayed /s/ in Sanskrit: *ségʰoh₂(mi) > Greek ἔχω but Sanskrit sahā(mi).

Greek /h/ cannot however trigger Grassmann's; PIE *dʰh₁sós 'god' > proto-Greek tʰehós (and Mycenean te-ho) > θεός, not **τεός.

[Frislander]

The "prosodic aspiration" idea is a new one on me, and I think could be used to explain most of the family relatively OK. You could say that this feature tends to attach left-wards, which could be used to unify Grassman's Law in Greek and Indo-Aryan (with an extension to debuccalised *s- in Greek), with the realisation being different in these two languages. You could also explain Winter's Law by this, since an aspiration feature could be explained as blocking a regular change before voiced stops.

However you have a problem reconciling this with Germanic - a suprasegmental which produces aspiration in Greek and Indo-Aryan and is lost elsewhere also somehow produces stop voicing? And then Italic completely mucks everything up, like why on earth should this thing produce voiceless fricatives? So I personally wouldn't support it.

I remember reading at some point that Indo-Aryan and Anatolian share a higher than average amount of inherited vocabulary, although I forget where I read it and the reliability of that source.

But retained archaisms are not evidence for a subgroup and never have been considered as such.

[Tropylium]

I near-shitposted about a "prosodic" reconstruction on Tumblr about a year back, dunno if any of you are thinking about this though.

However you have a problem reconciling this with Germanic - a suprasegmental which produces aspiration in Greek and Indo-Aryan and is lost elsewhere also somehow produces stop voicing? And then Italic completely mucks everything up, like why on earth should this thing produce voiceless fricatives?

Italic is easy; just have the suprasegmental trigger voiceless aspirates that then fricativize. Germanic seems to require some chain shifts however.

I remember reading at some point that Indo-Aryan and Anatolian share a higher than average amount of inherited vocabulary, although I forget where I read it and the reliability of that source.

But retained archaisms are not evidence for a subgroup and never have been considered as such.

If we do suppose an Indo-Anatolian group, then at least all binarily shared vocab could be only from intermediate PIA, not from PIE.

You could do the same lexicon reanalysis with any two groups though (lexicon is quite simply unrootable). Are there any common innovations whatsoever in fields like phonology or morphology? Maybe *o > *ā versus *a > *a in at least some positions, though even that's maybe a reconstructional artifact that could also be an archaism.

[Xwtek]

I near-shitposted about a "prosodic" reconstruction on Tumblr about a year back, dunno if any of you are thinking about this though.

Why do it affect P instead of B?

[KathTheDragon]

Greek /h/ cannot however trigger Grassmann's; PIE *dʰh₁sós 'god' > proto-Greek tʰehós (and Mycenean te-ho) > θεός, not **τεός.

That's relatively easy to account for: just have medial /h/ be lost prior to Grassman's law, since initial /h/ is retained to then be dissimilated.

[Tropylium]

I near-shitposted about a "prosodic" reconstruction on Tumblr about a year back, dunno if any of you are thinking about this though.

Why do it affect P instead of B?

Meta-answer: 'cos it's Wild Speculation and not hole-poking-proofed ¯\_(ッ)_/¯

[Salmoneus]

FWIW, lexicostatistical models I've seen have almost all had Greek as the first breakaway (after Anatolian and Tocharian, obviously), sometimes accompanied by Armenian. Argues against any Anatolian-Aryan clade. Especially as in some ways this special place for Greek seems to be unexpected, given its location (though makes sense historically, I think). And a greek-first model is also nice in terms of the laryngeals.


[If we saw Greek as a language that stayed on the steppe, or returned to the steppe first, while the other languages were all up in corded ware, we could then see the 'greco-aryan' features as influence from greek to II when II returned to the steppe, while BS was the branch of II that stayed in the north an hence didn't get that influence (satem/ruki then being an eastern corded ware development).]

[mèþru]

I think that Balto-Slavic and the non-Tocharian Centum languages are one branch, at least in terms of sound changes. I haven't looked at the vocab much when considering these things, and there might have been a substantial split in word usage before the sound splits for all I know

[WeepingElf]

I near-shitposted about a "prosodic" reconstruction on Tumblr about a year back, dunno if any of you are thinking about this though.

That is a quite sensible idea, I think. Explains well why *T and *Dh do not co-occur in a root while seeming to form a class at the exclusion of *D.

[Pabappa]

I read the post but I am sticking with my own idea because I don't think p>bh is likely.

[anxi]

I near-shitposted about a "prosodic" reconstruction on Tumblr about a year back, dunno if any of you are thinking about this though.

Why do it affect P instead of B?

I guess because it's *P that occurs in (almost) complementary distribution with *Bʰ, not *B.

Also, I realize it's a near-shitpost, but it actually isn't that weird, considering…

[WeepingElf]

I read the post but I am sticking with my own idea because I don't think p>bh is likely.

Well, we can't take the Late PIE phonetic values at face value for this. Obviously, we are dealing with an old pattern that harks back to a time when the three stop grades had different phonetic values. I also wonder whether the *D grade corresponds to the Uralic spirants, which likewise lack a labial member (which may have merged with *w before Indo-Uralic broke up), but that is a speculation that belongs to the Great Macrofamilies Thread.

[Howl]

I read the post but I am sticking with my own idea because I don't think p>bh is likely.

Well, we can't take the Late PIE phonetic values at face value for this. Obviously, we are dealing with an old pattern that harks back to a time when the three stop grades had different phonetic values. I also wonder whether the *D grade corresponds to the Uralic spirants, which likewise lack a labial member (which may have merged with *w before Indo-Uralic broke up), but that is a speculation that belongs to the Great Macrofamilies Thread.

You do know that *ð and *γ don't occur word-initially in Uralic, I hope?

Time for my own hyper-speculative shitpost version of a 2 to 3 stop grade system transition for PIE.

0. I assume a glottal stop existed as a phoneme in PIE before these changes.
1. A glottal stop is also inserted next to a voiced stop when unvoiced stops occur in a word.
-- So *Te(R)D becomes *Te(R)ʔD. And *De(R)T becomes *Dʔe(R)T
2. When subsequent glottal stops occur in a word, only the first one next to a voiced stop remains.
-- So *TʔeDʔeT becomes *TeDʔeT.
3. Any combination of a glottal stop and stop becomes a glottalized stop *D' (or an ejective or implosive if you prefer that)
4a Unglottalized voiced stops become voiced fricatives in North-West PIE. (*D -> *Ð)
4b Unglottalized voiced stops become voiced aspirates in South-East PIE. (*D -> Dʰ)
5 All PIE branches eventually deglottalize the glottalized stops (*D' -> *D).

Note: North-West PIE here is Balto-Slavic + Germanic + Italic + Celtic. South-East PIE is at least Indo-Iranian + Greek, probably also Tocharian.

[Nortaneous]

Aspiration dissimilation seems common enough given the presence of aspirates - occurring in Bantu ("Katupha's Law"), Mongolic, and maybe even Proto-Basque (*h is reconstructed as a prosodic feature that can only occur once per word) - that I don't think its occurrence in Greek and IA means much about subgrouping. They could just be independent developments. Grouping Greek and IA together based on shared Grassmann's is a little like grouping English and German together to the exclusion of Yola based on the chain shift of e: > i: > ai.

[WeepingElf]

I read the post but I am sticking with my own idea because I don't think p>bh is likely.

Well, we can't take the Late PIE phonetic values at face value for this. Obviously, we are dealing with an old pattern that harks back to a time when the three stop grades had different phonetic values. I also wonder whether the *D grade corresponds to the Uralic spirants, which likewise lack a labial member (which may have merged with *w before Indo-Uralic broke up), but that is a speculation that belongs to the Great Macrofamilies Thread.

You do know that *ð and *γ don't occur word-initially in Uralic, I hope?

Yes, I know. This is a legitimate objection; of course, Proto-Uralic may have lost initial spirants by some sort of sound change, but that would be ad-hoc speculation. Indeed, only the comparative method can tell whether my idea makes sense or not.

[mae]

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[mèþru]

continuing from the megafamily thread because it is getting off topic
The *a *o merger is pretty tempting for a Balto-Germanic node.

[Richard W]

continuing from the megafamily thread because it is getting off topic
The *a *o merger is pretty tempting for a Balto-Germanic node.

It's a shame that the *ā *ō merger is only for an extremely doubtful Slavonic-Germanic node. However, not all isoglosses follow the divisions between the major families.

[Salmoneus]

continuing from the megafamily thread because it is getting off topic
The *a *o merger is pretty tempting for a Balto-Germanic node.

Not really. It's also found in Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Nuristani, Thracian, and Albanian - it's just a general 'eastern' feature. It is unusual that Germanic shares this characteristic with those languages... but given that it lacks their other (more unusual) innovations (like shifting the palatovelars forward, merging labiovelars with velars (except in Albanian) and RUKI), it's more likely that this is areal influence from Baltic into neighbouring Germanic.

[dhok]

In fact it may have trailed off even further west, as late IE *ō gives Proto-Celtic ā.