*gwh in Gmc.

[Douglas G Kilday]

Miguel Carrasquer Vidal (10 Jan 2001) wrote:

>[DGK]
> >I would add the tail-end of "five"; Goth. <fimf> suggests Early PIE *pempwe.

>[MCV]
>It would be a candidate, were it not that I rather like the idea of
>*pen-kwe "...and five" (an etymology similar to that of "ampersand").

[DGK]
If the second syllable is indeed the enclitic 'and', the first syllable is
more likely in my opinion to be 'one', with a "full hand" of four (*oktom?)
understood.

I still think *pempwe is a better fit for Early PIE. Otherwise the Germanic
forms require an ad-hoc assimilation of *p__kw__ to *p__p__ mirroring the
Italo-Celtic assimilation to *kw__kw__. But if this happened, why wasn't
*perkw- affected (Lat. quercus, OE fyrh, OHG forha)? We don't have
*firf-trees.

Is there any objection to *-kwe coming from *-pwe? Does this enclitic appear
in Hittite?