Re: [tied] *bhardha & lat. barbatus

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

From: alexmoeller@...

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, August 25, 2002 6:19 PM

Subject: [tied] *bhardha & lat. barbatus

> barba and barabatus they are both from the PIE *bhardha so far I am aware of it.
Could latin get these two words directly  from PIE ? Let us see:
> the PIE -bh- and -dh- , when they were fallowed by a voewl became in latin -f-

 

This is completely wrong. Intervocalically, *-bH- > Lat. -b- and *-dH- > Lat. -d-, but next to an *r (and in some other special environments) we get Lat. -b- from *dH as well, as in verbum < *werdHom or ruber < *h1rudHros. An -f- appears only in loans from other Italic languages.

> So in this case the latin should have had "farfa" and not "barba".

 

*farba, actually.

 

> And this is true, indeed the latin have had the word farfechie=moustache

 

???

> The Opinion of A. Meillet here that latin -f-  became a "b" under the influence of the second -b- in the word is of no help because in this case we have no second -b- because the dh> f too.

 

See above. The assimilation, though irregular, is no more "impossible" than It. pipistrello < OIt. vipistrello or Lat. bibo: < *pibo: .
Piotr