Fournet's Law

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> > Besides Hitt. sak(u)wa- "eye" (< PA *sogWo- < PIE *sókWo-)
> > [with irregular t- in the Luwian branch], there's also Hitt.
> > suwais "bird", possibly connected to <avis> etc.
>
> If <suwais> is related to <avis> (I have some new ideas concerning its
> etymology, but I'm still working on it and wouldn't like to divulge the
> details prematurely), the loss of *h2 is of course regular between an
> s-mobile and a consonant. Hitt. sakuwa is, in my opinion, best explained
> as a a thematic deverbal noun from *sekW- 'follow, join, accompany'
> (with secondary meanings like 'see'). Any original connection with
> *h3okW- is IMO doubtful despite the similarity of both roots and their
> semantic convergence.
>

I'm affraid this isn't the only example of Hittite s^- corresponding to IE *h3-, as we've also got s^ankuwai- 'nail; a unit of linear measure' ~ *h3nogh- 'nail'. IMHO this correspondence is genuine, as I've found similar cases outside of Anatolian, although related to *h2:

*sam-/*sºm-ro- 'summer' ~ *h2e:m-ºr- '(heat of the) day' (Greek he:méra, Armenian awr 'day')
*sap- 'thorn' (Hittite sapi-kkusta, sepi-kkusta 'needle', Gaulish *sapo- 'fir', Welsh syb-wydd 'pine', Germanic *saf- 'reed') ~ Latin abi-Ä"s 'fir tree'

As Semitic has pharyngeal fricatives (e.g. *X\amm- 'to be hot; warm') corresponding to PIE "laryngeals", I deduce they're conservative, while the ones with *s must be the result of a sound shift in some Paleo-IE dialect.

By contrast, when *s- derives from a palatal sibilant like the one proposed by Gamkrelidze-Ivanov, it corresponds to traditional PIE *y-:

*sa(n)k- 'to sanctify' (Latin sacer, sanctus) ~ *yag^- 'to honour, to worship' (Greek hágios, etc.)
*sah2-n- 'healthy' (Latin sa:nus) ~ *yak- 'to cure' (Greek ákos)

I call these sound shifts "Fournet's Law", a kind of "satemization" process by which a *dorsal* (post-velar, palatal) fricative became a coronal (alveolar) one.