Re: Cluster kp- in Germanic

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 51072
Date: 2008-01-01

On 2008-01-01 19:48, alexandru_mg3 wrote:

> Could somebody help me with the output of the cluster *kp in Germanic
>
> Is reduced to k?
>
> Are there some examples?

The cluster is so rare that finding it in _one_ word would be a stroke
of exceptionally god luck. I think it _may_ occur in the word for 'head'
in Latin and Germanic. The idea is that a reduplicated structure like
*ká-kp-ut-, thematised in pre-Germanic (*ka-kp-ut-ó-m), lost the *k in
the ancestor of Lat. caput, while the Germanic development was *kakputó-
> *kauputó- > *xauBuða-. The original meaning would have been something
like 'potsherd' (cf. the parallel semantic development of Lat. testa or
Slavic *c^erpU), from the root *kap- 'hold, contain', and the word would
have been formally related to the perfect participle of the verb (see
the reduplication and the suffix *-ut- : *-wot-/*-us-).

Piotr