--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> > [Sergei:] ...if not just a borrowing from (or developed under the
influence of) the East Slavs.
>
> I don't think so. The nasal vowel practically guarantees that the
word is native West Slavic. East Slavic influence would surely
produce an initial <gu-> or <hu->.
>
> Piotr
OK, surrender. I just can't recollect other examples (some
Selishchev's paper). But my point was a bit wider than this popular
insect: I tried (more or less cla:ra: voce) to evangelize the
following hypothesis: in it phonemic inventory Proto-Slavic had a
(potential) phoneme /W/ (used as a prosthesis before /o/ and /o,/,
thus functionally different from (bilabial) /v/) with two allophones
[w] and (voiced) [h].
Cf. Russ. <eta> 'this (f.)' and Byel. <geta> [G-] 'the same' < *e ta
and Ukr. <ot> 'here etc.' and Russ. <vot> 'the same' < *otU.
Later this potential phoneme's allophones merged with other phonemes
of specific languages.
Sergei