Re: [tied] *gWerh3- "to devour"

On Sat, 21 Sep 2002 20:18:40 +0200, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

>Is there any other reason for reconstructing '7' as *septh3m?

I'm pretty certain the numeral was borrowed from Semitic *sab3atum, and if
Semitic `ayn was borrowed in PIE as *h3, there may be a reason why *h3 surfaces
in the ordinal.

>But if there were, the cardinal would have become *hebda in Greek, wouldn't it?

The cardinal must be reconstructed as *septm. (ignoring Germanic for now). I
don't have an answer right now as to why a pre-PIE *h3 was deleted from the
cardinal, but retained in the ordinal, but if there's a rule, it probably has to
do with the accent.

>So, apparently, *sebdh3mos comes from *septm.mos restructured on the analogy of *og^dh3mos,

Well, *og^dh3wos.

>which means that we can't use <hebdomos> as independent evidence of *h3-induced voicing. This leaves us without an explanation for *sedmU '7th' in Slavic, for it's the form of Slavic '8th' that is itself analogical: *osmU, with *m from the preceding ordinal but _no voicing_! Since *aCtmas goes back all the way to Proto-Balto-Slavic, one can hardly argue that perhaps Proto-Slavic once had *ozd(v)U '8th', which caused analogical voicing in *se(p)tmU and then was replaced by *os(t)mU (why not *oz(d)mU??): in the light of all available evidence, *os(t)mU was the only form Proto-Slavic ever had.

Indeed. So *sedmU can't be analogical after *os(t)mU. And then there's
Germanic *sebun, which is also unexplained. And Sanskrit as'i:ti- "80".

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...