Re: Laryngeal h4

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "etherman23" <etherman23@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@> wrote:
> >
> > At 12:56:50 PM on Thursday, November 6, 2008, etherman23
> > wrote:
> >
> > > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
> > > <gpiotr@> wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > >> I actully overlooked one example: *sleh2gW-
> >
> > > According to Starostin this only occurs in Greek and Old
> > > English. The Old English, laccan, appears to lack a
> > > labiovelar (though perhaps this is due to the loss of
> > > labialization before rounded vowels if OE /a/ was
> > > rounded).
> >
> > Do you mean OE <læccan> 'to grasp, to seize'?
>
> Yes.
>
> > That appears
> > to be from PGmc. *lakjan or the like, and I expect that a
> > labiovelar wouldn't have survived WGmc. gemination and
> > palatalization even if it was present in PGmc.
>
> Indeed. So it's a pretty poor witness for the existence of a
> labiovelar. So we have to rely on the Greek word. In any case it
> really doesn't change the thesis. This could be a word borrowed into
> Greek and Germanic but retained only in Old English and Greek.
>

DEO:
II. lange "nå til; række efter el. til" ["reach up to" inanim.; "reach
for or to" anim.] MDa., Nw. id., Sw. langa; loan from MLG, Du. langen,
corr. to MHG langen "get long, stretch out to reach for smt.", Grm.
langen "reach [up to], be sufficient"; from Gmc. *lange:n, deriv. of lang.

I'd rather see that with the OE verb, as a root *lakk-/*lang-, with
auslaut variation as in Schrijver's language of geminates, and root
/a/ as the Latin 'mots populaires', in which the /a/ usually matches
Gmc. /a/. And yes, I think the the former provided the words of the
latter, and that it was Venetic (ie. the Venetic group of languages).


Torsten