*gwh in Gmc.

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

On Mon, 18 Dec 2000 03:30:12 -0000, "Douglas G Kilday"
<acnasvers at hotmail.com> wrote:

Sorry for the late reply, I was away for three weeks.

>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal (5 Dec 2000) wrote:

>>As I may have mentioned here earlier, I have been investigating the
>>possible ramifications of hypothesizing that not only *k/*g/*gh had
>>labialized (*kw/*gw/*ghw) and palatalized (*k^/*g^/*gh^) variants, but
>>that this was originally the case for *all* (pre-)PIE consonants.

>>One interesting possibility is **pw, which would have mostly merged
>>with *kw (for obvious reasons, a labialized labial would have been a
>>highly marked phoneme), but with *p in (pre-)Germanic.

>I'm not comfortable with double stars, but *pw in Early PIE which merged
>with *p in Pre-Germanic and with *kw in most other dialects  makes sense.

Thanks for the support :-).

>>This could be the case in the words "liver", "four", "-leven, -lve",
>> >"oven", "wolf" and some others ("leave", "sieve", etc.).

>I would add the tail-end of "five"; Goth. <fimf> suggests Early PIE *pempwe.

It would be a candidate, were it not that I rather like the idea of
*pen-kwe "...and five" (an etymology similar to that of "ampersand").

>>I'm not too pleased with "bane", however, being from the same root as
>> >*gunT- "Kampf, Schlacht", which means a putative **bhwen- (for PIE
>> >*ghwen) "to kill" is out of the question.  Not that it matters for
>> >judging the etymology by its own merits...

>I don't follow this.

I meant that *if* "bane" and <gunT-> are from the same root, it would
ruin my theory, which requires *bhw-words to be etymologically
distinct from *ghw-words (and similarly *pw- and *kw-words).

>In my opinion, PIE roots containing a labialized aspirate (traditional *gwh)
>which becomes Gmc. *w are most easily explained by assuming that the Early
>PIE root had *bhw. The phonetic realization in Early Gmc. was probably close
>to [vw], and this could plausibly have been reduced to [w]. In "mainstream"
>PIE, *bhw merged with *ghw. I hypothesize:

>  Lat. <formus>, Gk. <thermos>, Skt. <gharmas>, OE <wearm> <- *bhwermos
>  Lat. <nivis>, <ninguit>, Gk. <niphei>, OE <sni:wan> <- *sneibhw-
>  Lat. <nefrendes>, Gk. <nephroi>, ME <nere>, Ger. <Niere> <- *nebhwr-

>Early PIE *dhw may be represented in "deer", OE <de:or>, assuming this is
>connected with Lat. <ferus>, Gk. <the:r>. The latter has the Aeolic form
><phe:r> which suggests a PIE labialized aspirate, just as Aeol. <pisures>
>'four', <pempe> 'five' have <p> for Attic <t> where PIE had a labialized
>stop. I would refer "deer" to *dhwer- which became *ghwer- in "mainstream"
>PIE.

Interesting.

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