Updates regarding UPenn tree

[Dr. John E. McLaughlin]

Are there any actual examples of *hw >*f in PGmc post-Grimm (other Dr
Crist's guess at *penkwe > *finhw- > *finf)?  It would seem that the
alveolar /n/ might preclude any assimilation of /hw/ to /f/.  Just thinking
off the top of my head.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)

-----Original Message-----
From: Indo-European mailing list [mailto:Indo-European at xkl.com]On Behalf
Of Sean Crist
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 1999 9:46 PM
Subject: Re: Updates regarding UPenn tree

[ moderator snip ]

Actually, it occurs to me that this change might just as easily have been
post-Grimm's Law as pre-.  *penkwe would give *finhw- by Grimm's Law and
by the raising of /e/ before nasals.  It could readily be the case that
learners would mishear /hw/ as /f/ in this environment, reanalysing it as
*/finf/, which is the correct PGmc reconstruction. I can't think of any
problem with this right off.

[ moderator snip ]