Re: [tied] *gwh in Gmc.

Some folks believe that Germanic *ban-o:n- (English bane) reflects *gWHon- (*gWHen- 'kill, strike'). Not very likely, in my opinion, also because of the aberrant vocalism. Uncontroversial examples like *warma- 'warm' < *gWHormo-, *snaiwa- 'snow' < *snoigWHo-, *newr-o:n- 'kidney' < *negWHr- suggest that *gWH > *GW > w in all positions except after nasals (where a stop allophone of /G/ was retained, as in the 'sing' word), before /u/ (*gWHn-t- > *GWunT- > *GunT- 'battle'), and possibly when flanked by historically back vowels (*dHogWHo- > *DaGWa- > *DaGa- 'day'). The development of *-GW- produced by Verner's Law (< *-kW-') was the same.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Saturday, December 02, 2000 3:37 AM

Subject: [tied] *gwh in Gmc.

In Collinge's "The Laws of Indo-European", under "Siever's Law II" (i.e. the development of PIE *gwh), reference is made to a work by Seebold 1967 ("Die Vertretung idg. *gwh- in Germanischen", KZ 81.104-133). In Collinge's summary table, it is stated that "*/gwh/" gives /b/ in initial position (except before /u/). What is this about? Pokorny doesn't seem to recognize this development, and the only root with initial *gwh- that I found in Pokorny and that I was able to link to initial *b- in Germanic would be *gwhedh- "bitten, begehren". (I thought if anybody here knows, I might spare myself the inconvenience of getting hold of the appropiate issue of Kuhn's Zeitschrift ...) ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv@...