Re: [tied] Italo-Celtic : p-kw > kw-kw

From: petegray
Message: 4633
Date: 2000-11-11

João asked:

>..[Italo-Celtic p-kw > kw-kw]... Lat quercus, quinque, coquo
>Are there another examples?
>May this assimilation occur in compounds, like, for instance, *pro-kwolo- >
*kwro-kwolo ?
>Similarly, may this assimilation occur in bh-gwh, p-gw, p-ghw, b-gw, etc
?

(a) I am unaware of any other examples. There are no other p..kw roots in
PIE, as far as I know. The only kw..p root is the remarkable form *kwsep,
which survives only into Sanskrit & Greek.

(b) In Latin this assimilation only occurs within an inherited root. If the
compounding prefix were productive, analogical pressures might well prevent
assimilation.

(c) Briefly, they don't assimilate! But the evidence is very sparse:
There are no examples with b- (because of rarity of PIE /b/), although a
form *breukw is suggested in Pokorny from Greek and Slavic.

I can find none with bh..gwh.

For bh...gw, I can find:
bhlegw (swell), based on Greek and Germanic.
bhegw (run away) Hindi, Greek, Lith, Slav, Toch - but not Latin
or Celtic

The form bh...kw should be theoretically impossible, but I find three
examples:
bharekw (stuff) Latin farcio, perhaps also frequens; mIrish barc
bhloskw (onomatopoia) Irish blosc
bhro:iskwo (a herb) - only in Slavic

I can find no p...gw roots. The form p...gwh is (in theory) impossible.

So only two words, one onomatopoic, are availabnle as evidence. Only Latin
Farcio seems to suggest a lack of assimilation.

Peter