Re: *kap-

>
> No borrowing is ever out of the question completely as some future
> etymologist will, no doubt, exclaim when he sees what the Japanese

have made

> of 'McDonald's'; however, why should we consider a loan until all

ancestral

> possibilities have been thoroughly rejected? If I understand the

question,

> the major problem with *kap- for some is two voiceless stops in the

root, a

> PIE no-no. Without boring you with details, I suspect strongly that

the word

> should be reconstructed as **k(h)a(:)p- from a pre-PIE *kho?ap-,

which would

> radically change the root form. By itself, *kap- implies *kaHp- or

*k(h)ap-,

> leading to **ka:p- since *a cannot be maintained in PIE without

having

> undergone (temporary) lengthening through either a laryngeal or

lost and

> compensated aspiration.
>

PIE *kap- is not a problem, Proto-Germanic *kap-, supposedly from PIE
*gab- is. Dutch kappen "cut", Swedish kapa "steal" etc must therefore
have another source, ie. be loans, from a substrate or otherwise.
It's interesting that they coexist with roots like Sw haffa "grasp",
which might be the same root after Grimm, ie Germanic. Also that the
semantics of these words is maritime.


Torsten