[tied] Evening/Night (was Re: The "Mother" Problem)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> >Why, then, don't we see Attic Greek *heîsperos?
>
> Some forms have */e/ [Gr. hésperos, Lat. vesper,
> Balto-Slavic *wekeras], others have */(V)i/ [We. ucher <
> *woiksero-, Arm. gis^er].
>
> As I mentioned, the root "change" shows the same variation
> *weik- vs. *wek- (~ *wenk-). For the nasal-infix variant,
> the forms given in Pokorny Lith. úkanas "trübe", ùnkna
> "shadow", Lat. umbra < *unksra: "shadow" may also be
> relevant (*wnks-n/r-?).

The nasal-infix is understandable, of course. However, I don't
understand what would produce an alternation like *weik- ~ *wek-.

> >Where does the aspiration in the Greek form come from?
>
> From *w-. This is regular in the context *w...s- (hennu:mi
> < *wes-nu-, hestía < *westia:).

Sorry, I should have specified. I was talking about the /ph/ in
Greek pséphas 'darkness'.

> >Also, IE was presumably SOV at the time of its breakup. So, such
> >a compound would have 'transition' at the end, not at the
> >beginning (since it seems to be the headword).
>
> Hamp, if I understand correctly, suggests a phrase *<weiks
> ksperos> where *weiks is a (root) noun in the nom. and
> *ksperos is genitive.
>
> My source is Olsen TNIBA, p. 179, where Hamp is quoted in a
> footnote as "an old compound ... *ueik-ksperos (perhaps
> originally a syntactic phrase, and, if so, possibly with
> *-ks- by haplology for *-ks-ks-)".

However, since IE was primarily left-branching, possessives
overwhelmingly preceded their headwords. So we should expect
*<ksperos weiks> instead.

- Rob