*gwh in Gmc.

[Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen]

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Douglas G Kilday wrote:

> I still think *pempwe is a better fit for Early PIE. Otherwise the Germanic
> forms require an ad-hoc assimilation of *p__kw__ to *p__p__ mirroring the
> Italo-Celtic assimilation to *kw__kw__. But if this happened, why wasn't
> *perkw- affected (Lat. quercus, OE fyrh, OHG forha)? We don't have
> *firf-trees.

> Is there any objection to *-kwe coming from *-pwe? Does this enclitic appear
> in Hittite?

Hitt. has (at least) kuis-ki 'every' = Lat. quis-que, cf. Luvian kuis-ha
(-ha 'and'; also Lycian tise : se 'and'). Whatever the full history, the
protoform must have contained a velar element in the enclitic part.

The story of Germanic *fimf is different from *pen{kw}e > Italo-Celtic
*{kw}en{kw}e and *pe{kw}- > *{kw}e{kw}-. The Germanic event is restricted
to the one word 'five' which of course follows 'four' in counting, this
giving the array *xw-{th}w--f-xw in which the xw's changed to f, no doubt
by assimilation, given the nature of [f] as something very close to a
"rounded thorn".

Jens