Greek question & the pre-history of *nekwt

[Yoel L. Arbeitman]

>Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 10:46:04 -0500
>To: proto-language at email.msn.com
>From: "Yoel  L. Arbeitman" <yoel at mindspring.com>
>Subject: PersonalResponse: Greek question & the pre-history of *nekwt

>Dear Pat,

>I have not been able to work through Melchert's explanation and summarize
>it until now. In general I avoid doing research for these postings and only
>give what I know off the top of my head. And Melchert's book is one of
>constant crossreferencing for each word, by segmentable phenomena of said
>word.

>So here directly to you and then to the List (to save time to you) is the
>best I can do with complicated argumentation:

>	(1) PA has [a] a retrogressive voicing law which disappears before
>[b] the PA rule of medial */kw/ to */gw/ change.

>	(2) By [1b], IE *nekw-t- > PA *negw-t(+s), <neguz> /negu-t+s/ 'evening,
>twilight'; <neku-> /negu-/ 'become twiglight'.

>	(3) It was canonized decades ago by Sturtevant that 'night', as 'the
>time of undressing', was cognate with the IE word for "naked" in Hittite
><nekumant->. But this < *PA negw-mo- (for IE or Pre-PA *negw-no-) as shown by
>non-Hittite cognates.

>	 Watkins AHDIER gives the root as *nogw- 'naked', with suffix -e/oto-
>English (Germanic) "naked", with suffix -edo- > Latin nudus, and with
>suffix *--mo- > Gk. gymno-.

>	Thus 'night' is IE *nekw-, 'naked' IE *negw-.

>	Melchert operates on the principle of finding the Anatolian word,
>comparing what we can of cognate IE matches and then ordering rule
>operations. It's complex, but the best we have around.

>	Yoel

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