*gwh in Gmc.

[Eduard Selleslagh]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G Kilday" <acnasvers at hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2001 9:04 PM

> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal (10 Jan 2001) wrote:

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

>> [MCV]
>> 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").

> [DGK]

> If the second syllable is indeed the enclitic 'and', the first syllable is
> more likely in my opinion to be 'one', with a "full hand" of four (*oktom?)
> understood.

[Ed]
Why not 'and [a] thumb'?

> 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.

[Ed]
In P-Italic you have p_p_('pompe'). On the other hand, not all Germanic has
f_f_: Swedish 'femt', mirroring Greek 'pente' (NGr. 'pende'), where t < *kw. As
a non-specialist, I'm really confused. Help!

Ed Selleslagh