Fortunatov's Law and tolkAppiyar's rules

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

Vidhyanath Rao <vidynath at MATH.OHIO-STATE.EDU> wrote:

>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv at WXS.NL> wrote:
>>         *s^ (RUKI)  *k^ (SATEM)
>> Iran.   s^          s < c
>
>Does this mean that in Iranian, s>h and c>s occurred simultaneously,
>without c becoming a shibilant first? I thought that assibiliztion of
>c typically went through an `sh' stage first.

In Romance, CE/CI (/ke/, /ki/) first developed to /c^/ ("ch")
(Italian, Romanian), then to /c/ ("ts") (Old French, Old Spanish),
then to /s/ (French, Catalan, Portuguese) or to /T/ (Spanish, > s in
Southern and American Spanish).  There was no stage with /s^/.

On the other hand, in French, Latin CA later became /ke/ > /c^e/ >
/s^e/ (e.g. "cheval", /s^@val/, Old French still /c^eval/).

We see the same things in Semitic, where PS *c^ developed to /s^/ in
some languages (Akkadian, Hebrew), to /T/ > /t/, /s/ in others
(Arabic, Ethiopic, Aramaic).

Other examples can be given from Slavic.

In general the main developments seem to be:

c^ => s^
   => c => s
        => T => s
             => t

>The fundemental question is the historical sequence of the three
>changes in Iranian, without any two sounds even getting mixed up.
>I don't see how to do it, if we insist that RUKI-s was always sh in
>Iranian.

I don't see what else it could have been: it's "sh" in Balto-Slavic
too.  I see the Iranian developments as:

              1.    2.    3.
*s         =>    => h  => h
*sC        =>    =>    => s
*{ruki}s   => s^ =>    => s^
*k^        => c^ => c  => s


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam