W dniu 2012-02-02 21:53, dgkilday57 pisze:
> I wonder whether that Greek verb could be explained on the basis of an
> archaic morphological pattern instead, full grade in the stative (*-eh2-
> or *-eh4) and zero-grade in the present. I seem to recall this verb
> having a Hittite cognate (whose pattern might shoot down such a proposal).
LIV (this time Kümmel) has *weh2g(^)- for 'break'. I think the brackets
can safely be removed, as I see no reason to deny a connection with Ved.
vájra- 'thunderbolt, Indra's weapon' (Av. vazra-). The zero grade
somehow never appears where one would expect to see it, and it seems
that short *a is as weak as the vocalism can possibly get (cf. also Gk.
agmós 'fracture'). Gk. ágnumi would have to continue the stem
*uh2g^neu-, but *uh2 undergoes regular laryngeal breaking to Proto-Greek
*wa:, and there's no way we could get *wa instead (even if one doesn't
accept Francis/Normier's Law: neither Greek, nor any non-breaking
language ever shows u:g^- < *uh2g^- in this root). Nothing but a
powerful international conspiracy could have wiped out the regular zero
grade so consistently.
As for the perfect <éa:ga>, all that LIV has to say is this: "R(e) statt
R(o), bei Wurzeln mit *eh2 im Gr. regulär". This kind of reasoning is
circular if there's no independent proof of the presence of *h2 here in
the first place (a-colouring isn't enough, as far as I'm concerned).
The Hittite cognate is wa:ki/wakkanzi 'bite'. Those who reconstruct a
laryngeal here have a hard time explaining the initial <wakk-> rather
than <ukk-> in the weak stem. If it looks for all the world like
*wa:g^-/*wag^-, why should it be anything else?
Piotr