*gwh in Gmc.

[proto-language]

Dear Miguel and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" <mcv at wxs.nl>
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2000 12:14 PM

> On Mon, 04 Dec 2000 21:45:31 +0100, Xavier Delamarre
> <xavier.delamarre at free.fr> wrote:

>> It is Seebold's personnal invention that IE *gwh- becomes Germanic b-.
>> His edition of Kluge's "Etym. Wvrterb. der deutschen Spr." (22. Auflage,
>> 1989) uses the law aboundently, e.g. _bdhen_ < *ghwre:- (p 54), _bitten_ <
>> *ghwedh-, OIr. guidid etc. (p. 88).

>> It has been rejected by some linguists (Polomi) but accepted by others
>> like Calvert Watkins (see his "IE Roots" : Eng. bane < OEng. bana < germ.
>> *bano:n < IE *gwhen- 'strike', and his "How to kill a Dragon", 423).

>> I find the law very convincing.

>> The discovery in the last decades that IE *ghw- becomes b- in Germanic
>> and w- in Gaulish is the best proof that IE comparative grammar is not a
>> dead science and can still undergo improvements.

> Thanks.

> As I may have mentioned here earlier, I have been investigating the
> possible ramifications of hypothesizing that not only *k/*g/*gh had
> labialized (*kw/*gw/*ghw) and palatalized (*k^/*g^/*gh^) variants, but
> that this was originally the case for *all* (pre-)PIE consonants.

<snip>

[PR]

The consonants in *gwhen-(6)-, 'beat', I believe to have originally been
early IE *gwVHVn- so that *gwh is not, as I believe Miguel would have it, a
velarization of *gh but rather the resolution of an accentually  occasioned
juxtaposition of *gw + *H.

This particular root is, I believe, found in Coptic hine, 'row', for which I
would amend the current hieroglyphic transcription of Xn(j) to *Xjn(j).

Possibly it may have a distant reflex in Arabic sha?an-un, 'disheveled hair,
a derivation of sha??a, 'scatter, disperse'.

As is well-known, there are a number of IE roots which have been assigned
the meaning 'beat'.

What I propose is that *gwhen- (*gwVHVn-) has the specific nuance of
'scattering by beating'; the application in Egyptian is the the sparying of
the water by the slapping of the oars.

Pat

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