Re: IE and their dogs : long-haired sheepdogs

--- In cybalist@..., "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

> But, BTW, on the subject, Venneman called it the only l/n
> heteroclitic root in IE. So I wondered: what about the noun HGerm
> Himmel vs. ON himinn "sky, heaven" (in German toponyms Lützel- and
> Lützen- (eg. in Luxembourg)) and the adjectives Eng little vs Sw
> liten, Eng michel vs. Da megen? Shouldn't they be l/n heteroclitic?

The 'heaven' word have been analysed as dissimilations of the
nasals. I've seen an account in Lockwood. I'm not sure of the
vowels, but the reconstruction starts from a form like himin-. In
Old Norse oblique cases, we have both himn- and hifn-. Old English
seems to have generalised the latter form, yielding something like
heofon (vowels TBC). German has dissimilated the 'n' to 'l'. An
analogy to the latter is English dialect 'chimley' for 'chimney.'

Richard.