Re: [tied] Catching up again...

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

From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2000 11:18 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Catching up again...

Miguel wrote:

 

> There are some additional examples: *spaikul- "spittle" (*spaiw-),
*aikurna- "squirrel" (cf. Slav. ve^verica, reshaped after *aik-
"oak").  Another interesting possibility is Du. aak (< een naak)
"(kind of) ship", OE naca, OHG nahho < *na:us (*nah2us, or more likely
metathesized *nauh2s).

 

As for *aikurna-, since it has been remodelled fter *aik-, you can't really be sure where *k comes from. What the Slavic word shows is most likely, IMO, rhotic dissimilation in an intensive reduplication (*war-wer-ika: > *waiwerika: -- reduplication with *a is something of a Balto-Slavic speciality). There are a few similar cases, e.g. Lithuanian vieversys (< *wei-wer-): OPrussian werwirsis 'skylark', Slavic paprot' 'fern' < *pa:-parti < *par-par-ti-, or Latvian paipala, Prussian <penpalo> = *pempala: < *pel-pal-a: 'quail' (Slavic has per-per- in the 'quail' word).

 

As for naca, *spaikul(-ra)- etc. Lehmann gives a full list of such items in Werner Winter's collection _Evidence for Laryngeals_ (1965). They also include hack (: hew), leak/leach (: Lat. lavo), OIcel. skeika (: *skaiwos), OE spic 'fat' (: Gk. pio:n), stack (: *stah2-) and of course ta:cor/zeichur 'wife's brother' and quick. Lehmann also lists cases of putative laryngeal > Germanic g (*jugunT- 'youth', OE brycg/OHG brucca 'bridge', mucga/mucke 'gnat', Gothic sugil/OE sygel 'sun', and English sow < sugu). He admits that 'the precise conditions for the two developments have yet to be determined', and yet is bold enough to ascribe the different Germanic reflexes to their derivation from two different laryngeals.

 

I'm very sceptical of such explanations. Examples such as *newn > Germanic *newun/*negun > niwun (> *niun)/nigun(i)-), cf. OE nigon, Dutch negen, show that the change *w > *g was possible in Germanic. It may have happened sporadically before Grimm's Law (eventually yielding *k) or more recently, yielding *g. Frisian examples of intervocalic *v (also < *b) turning into g show a still more recent dialectal reenactment of the same process (soogen 'seven', progost 'provost', ju^gel 'gable' < *jiuvul- < *gibula-). Analysing every unexpected velar as a laryngeal reflex without considering simpler alternatives first is paper linguistics.

>Of course in Armenian *w > g is regular (under certain conditions),
which is certainly not the case in Germanic.  The Verschärfung, as you
say, seems relevant here somehow, as it also involves sequences *yH
and *wH (> ggj/ddj and ggw in E & N. Germanic).  The difference seems
to be that Verschärfung occurs when a vowel [*e/*o] followed the
*yH/*wH cluster, while the current phenomenon involves a sequence
*yHC/*wHC (where C can also be a syllabic resonant).  But I bet there
are some further restrictions involved.

 

Talking of Verschärfung: First, the idea that it always involves *-jH- or *-wH- is by no means generally accepted. To reconstruct 'true' as *drewH- (with an otherwise unmotivated laryngeal) rather than *drew- only in order to satisfy a preconceived interpretation of Verschärfung, is questionable practice, a.k.a. circular reasoning. Secondly, it is debatable whether it makes sense to talk of an "E & N Germanic change" in this case; Verschärfung seems to have arisen parallelly but independently in Gothic and Scandinavian. There are examples of early Runic forms without it; such forms are also preserved as loans in Finnish (e.g. kuva 'picture' : Gothic skuggva 'mirror'). J.B. Voyles ("Early Germanic Grammar", 1992) regards Gothic Verschärfung and Old Icelandic Verschärfung (the latter split into more stages) as two different changes, and defines them without recourse to laryngeals.

 

Piotr