"centum"/"satem" "exceptions" [was Re: Northwest IE attributes]

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>-- *bergh.

*bherg^h

>There are derivatives in the Germanic language (eg., OHG burg,
>'fort', or Gothic baurgs, 'city, town'.  Homeric Greek (I think -- possible
>spelling error) burghos

That's probably <purgos> "tower", a Greek substrate word
(so-called "Pelasgian", with Germanic-like *r. > ur, and
Germanic-like b > p, but only after Greek-like Grassmann's Law
*bhrgh > *brgh).  Pokorny says that Latin burgus "watchtower" is
borrowed from Greek (but what about p-?).

>, and definitely Armenian burgn.

Wish it were so simple.  The root *bherg^h- is regularly
reflected in Armenian as barjr "high" etc., so <burgn> "tower", a
centum word if IE, does not appear to be native.  Birgit (also
from *bherg^h-) Olsen points out that the same irregularity in
the exact same environment is also found in <durgn> "potter's
wheel" besides darj- "to turn" (*dhrg^h-).  There is also Slavic
bre^g- "shore", of course, but there without any satem variants.
To add the finishing touch to the confusion, it's necessary to
mention Urartian <burgana> "palace, fort".  Urartean (non-IE,
related to Hurrian) used to be spoken where Armenian is spoken
now.

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