*gwh in Gmc.

[Mate Kapović]

-----Original Message-----
From: Douglas G Kilday <acnasvers at hotmail.com>
Date: 2001. veljača 06 08:26

>This seems to be the preferred explanation of Gmc. "five". Several respondents
>have made clear that Hittite and Gothic reflexes require *-kwe 'and',
>excluding *-pwe at any constructible stage of PIE. This leaves two
>possibilities:

>(1) Early PIE *penkwe, formed with *-kwe, which underwent anomalous
>assimilation to *pempe, *femfe (or the like) due to the rhythm of the counting
>ritual in Proto-Germanic *only*, leaving perfectly regular reflexes in other
>branches of IE.

>(2) Early PIE *pempwe, not formed with *-kwe, which became *pempe in
>Proto-Germanic, *penkwe in other PIE, following regular sound-changes.

>By "Early PIE" I mean after the Indo-Hittite fission but before the
>Indo-Germanic, which would have had to precede the other IE fissions for the
>labiolabial hypothesis to be valid. Although (1) is favored by respondents,
>(2) requires less special pleading. I must admit that funny things happen with
>numerals; I have never seen a plausible explanation of the voicing in Greek
><hebdomos>, <ogdoos>. On the other hand the labiolabial hypothesis seeks to
>explain the behavior of other Germanic labials corresponding to PIE
>labiovelars without waving the magic wand of "assimilation to a labial near a
>labial" which works only some of the time (and again *only* in Gmc.).  Either
>we seek reasonably comprehensive sound-laws, or we must hire Rumpelstiltskin
>to manage our Proto-Germanic phonology.

It seems to me that there are two of *kw > hw > f changes in Germanic 1 - 10
numbers. One in 5, as already said: *penkwe > *fimhw ?>  Goth. fimf and
other in 4:  *kwetwores (or smth similar) > *hwidwor > Goth. fidwor.
The one in 5 could be interpreted as changing the *hw to f to make it easier
to pronounce. I don't know can you pronounce *fimhw properly but my Slavic
mouth get all tangled up trying. :-)

The *hw > f change in 4 could be interpreted as analogical to the one in 5
or just as another sporradic *hw > f change (I know this doesn't sound
great).

Anyway, the change *hw > f (even if it's not entirely regular) doesn't seem
unusual even with w in superscript (cf. similar but not same, Arab qahvah,
Turkish kahva > French café (earlier cahoa too) etc., although the part of
Etiopia with which it's connected is Qafa, Croatian dialectal hvala > *hfala
> fala etc.). So the change of *{hw}/hw/hv > f doesn't seem all that strange
even if it seems somewhat irregular now. On the other hand the change of *pw
> *kw looks rather bizzare to me, although I wouldn't rule anything out...