Year, Earth

[Jess Tauber]

Hi. Just to add in my usual off the wall observation- in many languages the
morpheme for year/cycle/weather is similar in phonological shape to that for
earth/ground (and there may also be a case for person/man). Fellow travelers
from some distant time? I'm not sure I believe they ultimately have the
"same" etymology.

In any case, interestingly, in these languages the morphemes usually begin
with some rounded phoneme, either a labio-back or labial, and end in some
apical or nearly. Go figure. It would be interesting to know whether sound
changes were coordinate between the true etyma, w>m or vice versa, etc. *WEL
vs *MEN (articulatory positions pushed ahead one space on the phonological
cube), etc.  English, by the way, is one of the languages. Maybe a place to
look also are interrogative/irrealis formatives, which also tend to take
(k)w-/m- initials in reconstructed forms.

Jess Tauber
zylogy at aol.com
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