*gwh in Gmc.

[Xavier Delamarre]

le 2/12/00 3:36, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal à mcv at wxs.nl a écrit :

> In Collinge's "The Laws of Indo-European", under "Siever's Law II"
> (i.e. the development of PIE *gwh), reference is made to a work by
> Seebold 1967 ("Die Vertretung idg. *gwh- in Germanischen", KZ
> 81.104-133).  In Collinge's summary table, it is stated that "*/gwh/"
> gives /b/ in initial position (except before /u/).  What is this
> about?  Pokorny doesn't seem to recognize this development, and the
> only root with initial *gwh- that I found in Pokorny and that I was
> able to link to initial *b- in Germanic would be *gwhedh- "bitten,
> begehren".  (I thought if anybody here knows, I might spare myself the
> inconvenience of getting hold of the appropiate issue of Kuhn's
> Zeitschrift ...)

> =======================
> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
> mcv at wxs.nl

It is Seebold's personnal invention that IE *gwh- becomes Germanic b-. His
edition of Kluge's "Etym. Wörterb. der deutschen Spr." (22. Auflage, 1989)
uses the law aboundently, e.g. _bähen_ < *ghwre:- (p 54), _bitten_ <
*ghwedh-, OIr. guidid etc. (p. 88).

It has been rejected by some linguists (Polomé) but accepted by others like
Calvert Watkins (see his "IE Roots" : Eng. bane < OEng. bana < germ. *bano:n
< IE *gwhen- 'strike', and his "How to kill a Dragon", 423).

I find the law very convincing.

The discovery in the last decades that IE *ghw- becomes b- in Germanic and
w- in Gaulish is the best proof that IE comparative grammar is not a dead
science and can still undergo improvements.

XD