Re: Labiovelars

----- Original Message -----

From: Yves Deroubaix

To: cybalist@eGroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2000 7:01 PM

Subject: [cybalist] Re: Labiovelars

Yves writes:

I've a question about the labiovelar 'gwh'. In Germanic this labiovelar
became 'gw', but I don't know any Indo-european root with 'gwh' or
proto-Germanic root with 'gw'. Can you give me some exemples of the
mutations of this labiovelar and could you tell what happened with 'gwh' in
Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and the Slavic languages?

Thanks.

By Grimm's Law, PIE *gWH gave *gW with a fricative articulation of /g/ except when preceded by a nasal. The fricative element was then lost and Gmc *w is generally the reflex of *gWH. Of course you know many words derived from roots containing *gWH.

Here are a few obvious examples:

 

*snoigWHos 'snow' > English snow (Russian sneg, Latin nix, nivis, etc.)

*gWHormos 'hot' > English warm (Greek thermo-, and less directly related to Russian gor'achij 'hot')

*gWHen- 'strike, kill' > Old English gu:th 'war' (<*gun-th-, with labialisation "stolen" by the following /u/, cf. Slavic *zhen-/*gUn- 'strike', Sanskrit han-ti 'he slays, ghn-anti 'they slay' = Hittite kunantsi, etc.)

 

Piotr