[tied] Re: The role of analogy, alliteration and sandhi in counting

From: Richard Wordingham
Message: 34762
Date: 2004-10-18

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alex" <alxmoeller@...> wrote:
> Now, for the germanic "f", why should one think of kW > xw > f? It
appears
> very simple to say that Pre Proto-Germanic have had too "p" as
other centum
> languages and it became regular "f".

One SW dialect of Scots (a Germanic language or dialect) has /f/ for
the /wh/ words of English; given that orthographically Scots has used
<quh> for English <wh>, this looks very like xw > f. Similarly,
Maori <wh> is now pronounced /f/. Latin also appears to have had the
change xw > f. For Germanic, the question under the standard model
is then:

Sporadic kW (or kw) > p or sporadic xw > f?

Richard.