[gothic-l] PIE short {o} to Common Germanic {a}, etc: timing?

[Anthony Appleyard]

Hereinafter, `%' after a vowel means "short".

The books say that PIE {o%} > Common Germanic {a%} (e.g. PIE {somos} > Greekl
{homos}, Germanic {sama-}, English {same)); PIE long {a} > CG long {o) (e.g.
PIE *{bha:g-} > Greek {phe:gos}, CG {bo:k-}, English "book" and "beech". But
each of the various changes that distinguish CG from PIE, could have happened
at any time between 2000 BC and half a century before the first written
records of Germanic. But the first written records of Germanic, i.e. proper-
names recorded in Roman sources, seem to habitually have {o%} instead of {a%}
as a link-vowel in compounds: AriOvistus, Saltus TeutOburgensis, MarcOmanni.
(Sometimes {i} turns up as the link vowel, e.g. Asciburgius Mons.) Also, the
change {a:} to {o:} may have not happened yet, if I can trust one book's guess
that the forest name Bacenis means "of beech".

Re the connection between "book" and "beech", yesterday evening I saw a TV
program that showed Romans in lands too far from anywhere where papyrus grows,
writing in ink on very thin sheets of wood that looked like like veneer-
sheeting.


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