*gw

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>iffr762 at utxvms.cc.utexas.edu

>By the way, my pharyngeal theory, in its original crude form,
>also implies that there should be no IE /gw/.  This does not appear to be
>the case.  Nonetheless, I do seem to recall that IE /gw/, /ghw/, and /w/
>often get mixed up in the descendant branches.  (Any two out of the three,
>I mean, not all.)  Perhaps this is relevant.  Another possibility is that
>/b/ and /gw/ began to be confused at some point inthe proto-language, with
>the end result being that all instances of /b were absorbed into /gw/.

-- I would think that the survival of *gw in Mycenaean Greek (eg., Mycenaean
gwous, 'cow', later Greek 'bous') would indicate it survived in PIE.