bu/bau "buffalo etc."

[Alex François]

Jean-Paul,

/bo-/ is the regular reflex of IE *gwo- in Greek: e.g. /boa-ô/ <*gwowa:-
'shout', cf. Skt /gavate/;

Conversely, IE *gwo regularly becomes /wo-/ > /vo-/ in Latin, e.g.
/wora:-re/ 'devour' < *gwor- ; cf. Greek /bora/ 'food', Skt /girati/.

As for the word for 'cow', the root *gwou has regular reflexes in Greek
/BOUS/ and Skt /GAUH/;

but the Latin reflex /BO:S/, on the contrary, is irregular, and is said to
be a "dialectal" form - probably from Osque and/or Ombrian, I don't
remember. Latin should have /vo:s/.

I remember having seen this in the following reference (which however I
cannot check right now):
[M. Niedermann, Précis de phonétique historique du latin, Paris: Klincksieck
(4th ed. 1959)]

Cheers
Alex

******************
Alex François
Lacito-CNRS
Univ. Paris-III & IV
22, Chemin de la Justice
92290 Châtenay Malabry
   FRANCE


----- Original Message -----
From: "potetjp" <potetjp at wanadoo.fr>
To: " AUSTRONESIAN LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS" <AN-LANG at anu.edu.au>
Sent: Monday, November 27, 2000 3:09 PM
Subject: bu/bau "buffalo etc."

> You bring me back to reality - and how right you are - but, surely, there
> must have been a prehistorical time when IE *gwou- gave *gu- > *ku- in one
> area, hence German Kuh, English cow, and, on the other hand, *wu- > *bu-,
in
> another, otherwise, how do you account for the Greek and Latin terms?
>