--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> Would one PIE dialect be continued in
> > the Rigvedic dialect and Luvian, another in that of the
> Atharvaveda
> > and Hittite? Or was one form high-style archaic/archaizing and the
> > other one that of the common folk and their ill-behaving children,
> > or perhaps of women? I wouldn't know, but such variations would of
> > course live side by side and show interaction.
*mu:s- "mouse" is one of the few PIE roots with -u:-. Some think long
u -> *-eu-/-ou-/-u-.
There's a famous article the name and authos of which I forgot which
investigates the distribution of 'huis'/'muis' "house"/"mouse" in
Dutch; the vowel developped this way: *u: > *ü: > *ui > *äÜ (vel
sim.!).
The interesting part was that in some places it was 'huis' "house",
but 'mu:s' "mouse". In other words, since the "mouse" word belonged to
a 'loer' sphere, it stayed behind in the prestige-driven development
of the vowel.
So is the u: of the descendants of PIE *mu:s such a relic? In that
case, *u: might have been much more common in PIE.
Torsten