Pre-Basque phonology (fwd)

Nikos Sarantakos sarant at village.uunet.lu
Sun Oct 3 21:27:04 UTC 1999


At 20:12 30/09/99 +0200, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv at wxs.nl>
>Date: Thursday, September 30, 1999 4:08 AM

[ moderator snip ]

>>This root has initial ku-, which we can assume gives /k/ in Greek
>>(unlike labiovelar *kw and palatal + glide *k^u, which merge into
>>/p/, at least before /a/ and /o/).  There are no counterexamples,
>>as far as I know.

>[Ed Selleslagh]
>I already suspected something of the kind. Thanks for the clarification.
>What do you mean by 'there are no counterexamples'? Do you mean of 'kuV-
>becoming /p/ in Greek'?

Sorry to reveal my ignorance once again -but I am somehow puzzled
about the etymology of <kapnos>.
According to my  IE-loyal dictionary, <kapnos> comes from <*pap-nos>
which would come from IE *k(w)ep- meaning "smoking, boiling",
cf. sanskr. kup-yati "it is boiling" etc.

Now, don't misunderstand me -I do want to believe the mainstream
IE theory (although, as I said, I have the hunch Greek is older
than believed) but I can't buy this etymology. I would like to,
but I think it is full of holes. And this is not the first Greek
word that I have seen being put into IE shoes that (in my
rustic opinion) just don't fit.

nikos sarantakos



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