"Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@stratos.net> wrote in message news:<bvor7d01fri@drn.newsguy.com>...
> In article <bvd113$k18$1@news.onet.pl>, Piorokrat says...
>
> >U?ytkownik "Skitter The Cat" <Skitter_the_Cat@yahoo.com> napisa? w
> >wiadomo?ci news:uvdRb.64132$f97.17809@fe3.columbus.rr.com...
>
> >> On 26-Jan-2004, AC <mightymartianca@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >> > On Mon, 26 Jan 2004 16:16:19 +0000 (UTC),
> >> > Uncle Davey <noway@jose.com> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >> > > The tribal languages would have taken over from the family languages
> >> > > so that
> >> > > about four hundred years after Babel the single family language was as
> >> > > redundant and extinct as the single person language had been forty
> >> > > years after the Babel event.
>
> >> > Four hundred years ain't a long time. 16th century English might have
> >> > some
> >> > odd words and usages, but by and by people have no problems
> >> > understanding Shakespeare.
>
> >> In written form, it is easy. When done with period pronounciation, it
> >> does
> >> sound alittle weird-but followable. Much earlier in time though, things
> >> start to sound *really* strange though.
>
> >You got, like, a time machine there, buddy?
>
> >With your unique knowledge of period pronunciations, perhaps you could help
> >me with a query. I have heard that theta was pronounced not as the 'th' of
> >things but as the 't-h' of 'met her' in the Greek of Sophocles and
> >Aeschylos. I thought that the shift to a true fricative came earlier. Can
> >you use your linguistic time machine to settle that one for me?
>
> The earliest direct evidence for a fricative pronunciation of
> theta comes from Laconian in the 5th century BCE; some details
> on the nature of the evidence can be found in Geoffrey Horrocks,
> _Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers_. There is
> some evidence for early frication of chi (2nd century BCE) and
> phi (2nd c. CE) in the Asia Minor Koine, and for the latter in
> 'less literate Attic inscriptions of the early second century
> AD' (Horrocks, 112). The fricative pronunciations were probably
> widespread by the 4th c. CE, though Egypt retained the aspirated
> stops rather longer.
>
It's very interesting. I have a very fine course with 16 tapes and
very good quality materials on Ancient Greek, but I was a bit upset by
the use of aspirated stops in the tapes, since I really prefer
pronouncing with th's and f's and even I prefer to have the beta as
vita, the he as i, the zeta as 'z' not 'zd' and the 'delta' as a 'dh'.
In fact, if I had my way, I would pronounce it as Modern Greek, the
way I used to pronounce Old Norse as Modern Icelandic, to the delight
of one Anglo Saxon, Norse and Celtic lecturer and to the disgust of
the other.
> >Or, what a typical evolutionist comment, mixing fantasy with fact! You don't
> >know what Shakespeare sounded like any more than you know what a
> >Brontosaurus looked like.
>
> In fact there are extant detailed contemporary descriptions of 16th
> century English pronunciation. See E.J. Dobson, _English Pronunciation
> 1500-1700_, for details.
>
Hmmn. I didn't know that, but still it beggeth the question, who can
we know what these descriptions mean unless we know what they are
comparing to sounded in those days. Hence, when we read Shakespeare,
we use modern English pronounciation, but just as the pronunciation of
British English has varied greatly over one century, from the plummy
stuff at the outset when everyone sounded like Simon Callow reading
Jeeves and Wooster, through the very pleasant sound of British English
in the sixties and seventies, through to the horrible sound which I
can't listen to, of British English today, where people appear to
think they ought to sound like Australians, and even Tony Blair does
it.
At this rate of change we really don't know what Shakespeare's actors
sounded like.
We would need voice recordings.
> [...]
>
> >> > >It was a supertribe,
> >> > > and as with all supertribes, it fell apart, with people who spoke it
> >> > > leaving
> >> > > and mingling with the languages of the substrate where they went,
> >> > > which were
> >> > > generally tribal, not supertribal peoples, and could not compete with
> >> > > them.
> >> > > So we have a tendency for common grammatical elements to be seen, but
> >> > > a lot
> >> > > of different lexical stock from the borrowings. Even the supertribe
> >> > > itself
> >> > > had not been stable long when the emigrations started; some thought
> >> > > the word
> >> > > for 'a hundred' should be 'kentum' and others thought it should be
> >> > > 'sati'.
>
> No. The PIE root can be reconstructed with *k'-; in some dialects,
> called satem dialects, this *k'- later palatalized to /s/ (and similar
> sounds).
>
> [...]
Okay, if you say so, then the palatisation to 's' was already part of
the derivation of new tribal languages from the parent supertribal
language.
I suggest that k usually palatises to s via 'ts', but the intermediate
form may be lost. This is from the observation both of the breakup of
Latin and of Common Slavonic.
The word for 'fish' is very interesting.
Clearly we have a pisk- root, but look at all the exceptions to that
in all the language families. Even Greek has ichthys and now has
psari, neither of which are anything like the pisk- root that gives us
fish, vis, Fisch, pisces, poisson, peixe, and all that lot. Slavic has
ryba from top to bottom, but this is not anything to do with Turkish,
as 'balik'. In Russian, a word sounding just like the way the Turks
pronounce it, refers to a particular dried, salted fish.
Can you find a 'pisk-' relative in any non-IE language?
Uncle Davey
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