*gwh in Gmc.

Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl
Thu Feb 15 17:17:52 UTC 2001


On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 04:56:04 -0000, "Douglas G Kilday"
<acnasvers at hotmail.com> wrote:

>A variation on this theme is a three-stage model for the
>Indo-Europeanization of the pre-Germanic population. In this scenario, the
>first stage of contact between pre-Germans and IE-speakers resulted in the
>borrowing of a few IE words into pre-Germanic. These few words, belonging to
>a small set of categories, were not enough to influence pre-Gmc. phonology,
>which lacked labiovelars and replaced them with (labio-)labials. The second
>stage of more intense contact brought a large influx of IE words in which
>the distinction between labials and labiovelars could not be ignored, so
>pre-Germanic acquired the labiovelars along with the words. In the third
>stage, the grammar was largely Indo-Europeanized under extensive mixing of
>populations, and pre-Gmc. became Proto-Gmc.

This reminds me of the Old Irish treatment of Latin *p (Patricius >
Cothriche (*kw), later Pa'traic (*p)), but the other way around of
course...

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



More information about the Indo-european mailing list