Re: [tied] Re: NEuropean IE for apple

On Wed, 25 May 2005 08:56:42 +0200 (CEST), mkapovic@...
wrote:

>> On Tue, 24 May 2005 07:35:26 +0000, pielewe
>> <wrvermeer@...> wrote:
>>>
>>>(1) Czech and Slovak have prothetic v- in the word meaning 'egg':
>>>vejce (Gpl vaji:c), vajce.

[I wrote:]

>> It's risky to generalize from a single example, but that
>> would seem to indicate that the merger of *a: and *o: in
>> Slavic is a relatively recent phenomenon.
>
>But that merger should still be earlier than *aw > *o: which later became
>*u, like *awxa > *o:xa > *uxo "ear".

Probably yes. Maybe the development was first au > ou,
parallel to short a > o, and then ou > o: > u(:). But the
existence of o: < (ou <) < au does not _necessarily_ imply
that old o: was already gone: we could have had a stage with
e.g. /a:/, /O:/, /o:/, /u:/, or even /a:/, /O:/, /ou/ >
/o:/, /o:/ > /uo/, /u:/, from etymological (PIE) */a:/,
*/o:/, */au/ ~*/ou/, */o:i#/ and */u:/, eventually
developing into /a/, /a/, /u/, /u/ and /y/.

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