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Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@hidden.email> wrote: >>> Shouldn't PATER > Paßer/Passer, like >>> *water > Wasser? Obviously 'sparrow' >>> would have to be something other than >>> PASSER. >> >> According to my references the intervocalic to >> shift didn't occur after short /a/ (no idea >> *why*), so I have for example /fra:ter/ > /Tra:ter/ > >> /trasser/, but /pater/ > /pa:ter/ (the /a/ > /a:/ >> ultimately arising from the open $) > >Wouldn't _wasser_ be a counterexample to that? No. At least, not as far as I made out from my references at the time - all of which are currently 5600 km away so I can't check! Assumming my references are correct (and they are respected works so I hope they are !), I can only summise the /a/ in WGmc was long (I believe it still is in Dutch and low Saxon?) and so the /t/ changed to /ss/ and the presence of the double consonant later worked its magic and the original /a:/ became /a/ in high German dialects. >> Latin PASSER I think might undergo /s/ > /z/ > /r/ - I >> can't remember what happens to geminates... scratch >> that, it would stay at /s/ because of the stress. > >Secondly it was long, and thus not subject to voicing, >and thirdly Verners law surely was no longer in operation >at the time of the _saltus Teutoburgiensis_ incident, >as shown by early Latin and Romance loans in Germanic. True. Although I'm taking the academic uncertainty on the precise timing of Verner's Law, and the fact that we're dealing with pseudo reality here, to keep V's Law as I cackle MOC MOC MOC to myself like some mad old crone. Teutoburg marks the historical POD that explains the presence/survival of the language in the modern world, but the language has its roots about acentury earlier in the inital Roman expansions into GERMANIA during the Gallic wars that also occurred *here*. That still makes V's Law a little anachronistic, albeit it less so, but as we are dealing here in quantum transdimensional historical manipulation of realities... >You might even get a minimal pair _P(f)aßer--P(f)asser_ >with /a:/ vs. /a/. That would be fun :) I suspect having /a:/ and /a/ as contrasting phonemes could be a complicated nightmare though... Pete [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]