rhotacism from Ray Hickey

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
"H.M.Hubey" <hubeyh at montclair.edu> wrote:
 
[Armenian erku < *dwo:]
>Don't forget that Armenia sat in an area inundated with Turkic speakers
>and it is "eki" or "iki" in that language, and unless that word can be
>found in Armenian circa 1,000 BC or earlier, there cannot be any proof
>that it was not due to borrowing.
 
There's more than sufficient proof that Arm. erk- comes from *dw-.
 
We have <erkn> "birth pains" (cf. Greek <due:> "pain", Alb. <dhune">
"pain", from PIE *dau-, d at u-, du:-), Arm. <erkar> "long time",
<erkain> "long" < PIE *deu-, *dwa:- (cf. Grk. d(w)a:n "long time"),
Arm. <erknc^'im> "I fear" < PIE *dwei- (Grk. d(w)e(i)os "fear"), and
of course Arm. <erku> "two" < PIE *dwo: (Grk. du(w)o:)
 
There is also a mountain of evidence that PIE *o: > u in Armenian, so
the hypothesis that *<dwo:> became <erku> by regular sound change
(*dw- > erk-, *o: > u), is vastly superior at interpreting the facts
than the hypothesis that the word was borrowed from Turkic, a
hypothesis that fails to explain the /r/, the /k/ (Turkic /k/ is
aspirated, so should have given Arm. /k`/), and the /u/, and explains
the initial /e/ (phonetically [je] in Armenian) only by invoking a
much less widespread variant of Turkic *iki.
 
>Let us not forget that Sumerian for two is "imma"
 
The Sumerian for "2" is actually <min> or <minu>.
 
 
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam