Re: (G)nits

--- In cybalist@..., "richardwordingham" <richard.wordingham@...>
wrote:

> --- In cybalist@..., CeiSerith@... wrote:
>
> > On the other hand, I would doubt that one person in twenty

know

> what a
> > "nit" is, other than something you pick. (Did that ever have a
> plural in
> > English besides "nits?")
>
> The OE form was 'hnitu', so that should have had a plural 'hnita'.

I

> don't know whether the plural is attested. The regular phonetic
> development would have yielded 'nit' for both singular and plural.
>
> The word seems to be one of a not insignificant set of words with
> variation between /k/ and /g/. We have Germanic xnito: = 'not,

Greek

> konid- = 'dust', but Slavonic (or at least, Russian and Polish)
> gnída:, Danish gnid, Norwegian dialectical gnit. Onions also

quotes

> Old Irish sned 'nit' and Albanian thení 'louse'. Pokorny (
> http://iiasnt.leidenuniv.nl/cgi-bin/response.cgi?
>

flags=eygtnrl&single=1&basename=\data\ie\pokorny&text_recno=986&root=l

> eiden ) gives roots k^nid-, knid-, s(k)nid- and gHni:d-. (Note

that

> the hyperlink to gHni:d- from knid- is broken.)
>
> Another word with similar variation is 'suck', with roots seug- and
> seuk-, both of which are attested in Old English - su:can for seug-

,

> and su:gan for seuk-. Pokorny views them as alternative extensions
> of seu- 'juice', 'liquid'. I an not sure why Pokorny does not give
> Russian sosat' as an example of the extended root. Baltic forms

are

> given as:
>
> lett. su\kt `saugen'; apr. suge f. `Regen'.
>
> I don't know whether that excludes seuk^-. The Old Prussian form

is

> the only evidence I see for seug- as opposed to seug^.
>
> Interestingly, Blust in 'Patterns of sound change in the

Austronesian

> languages' (in Baldi, 1991) observes that Proto-Austronesian
> initial 'k' and 'g' have a 20% chance of showing up as the reflex

of

> the other in some daughter language, and offers an articulatory
> explanation for the confusion.
>
> Richard.

There was that Austronesian connection again!

Present Danish has gnidder "anything too small and detailed,
illegible".

There are a number of h-/g- in Norse. Danish ring/omkring "around",
kringle "pretzel", nive/knibe "pinch", Engl. nag/gnaw.

Torsten