Re: [tied] Enclosed Places (was: The unexplained link between Greek

On Sat, 12 Jul 2003 13:09:29 +0100, Richard Wordingham
<richard@...> wrote:

>How secure is the derivation? I would expect something like Latin *horbus
>or *horbis / *horbs, cf. hortus 'garden', which may well be related to
>*g^hordh- through a different suffix/extension. Pokorny sounds sceptical
>from the way he cites the word, 'über lat. urbs `Stadt', angeblich aus
>*ghordhos, s. Georgiev IF. 56, 200'.

The loss of h- is in itself not problematic: there are more examples of
early loss of h-. As to the vocalism, that's another issue. I remembered
that o > u sometimes happens in Latin, but having checked, this is
apparently only the case (with exceptions) before nc (uncus), ng (unguis),
mb (umbo), mc (hunc) and lC (multa, culpa). Remains the development o: >
u: before /r/ (fu:r), which would require a vrddhi formation *gho:rdhos >
*(h)urbs.


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