I'll try to deal with these items one by one, beginning with *kap-
Grzegorz Jagodzinski wrote:
> I see these examples not-so-striking because I have doubts concerning the
> reconstructions you give.
>
> 1) *ke:p-/*ko:p- may suggest *kEp (E = schwa), not *kap.
>
> I bet that the stem is *kHVpH- and it is related to the following:
Don't bet if you can easily lose.
> a) Slavic xapati "take, catch, bite" < *kHVHp- < *kHVpH- (V = a or o), Arm.
> xaphanem "I disturb" (semantics in Armenian - cf. with Slavic gabati below,
> Germ. p and Arm. ph < *pH, i.e. *p + laryngeal).
I've never seen this kind of metathesis in Slavic reconstructions, so I
assume it's ad hoc here, just to account for the long vowel. The alleged
(dialectal) Slavic *xapati 'snap, catch (violently)' is isolated and can
well be a loan from Low German (cf. Dutch happen 'snap'). It can't be
regarded as the iterative of *xopiti (with an even more restricted
dialectal range), which would be **xap(l)jati if it existed. <chopic'>
itself is suspiciously similar to Germanic *xapjan and so may be an
early loan.
> b) Germ. *xabe:- 'have' < *kVp- or *kVbh- (in fact, Lat. habe:re vs. Gmc.
> *xabe:- is striking!); also Germ. happig "greedy, grasping", be-hoof
> "behalf"; Alb. kam 'I have' (< *kap-m-) < *koHp- < *kHVpH-
Gmc. *xabe:- can be derived without any problems from *kap-éh1- (present
stem *kap-h1-jé-) with the stative suffix *-eh1- modifying the meaning
of the verb, from 'take, grasp' to 'have, keep'. Germanic *xapp- may
derive from *kap-n-' through Kluge's Law (see *xafn- < *káp-no- with
root stress). *kó:p-o- and *kó:p-a-h2 (as in Gk. ko:pe: '[oar-]handle')
are expected derivatives in the model I'm advocating here, as I have
explained before. Before you propose *koHp- as the preform of Alb. kam,
you should ask yourself what an *o would be doing in a root present. Or
perhaps it's kHoh3p- < *kHoph3-? But then we would expect the voicing of
*p, as in *pi-ph3-e/o-, in non-metathesised forms, and you'd run into
problems with Lat. ce:pi: (see below).
> c) Germ. *ko:pja- 'keep' < *kHVpH- (see pH > ph in Armenian with no
> consonantal shift)
> d) Germ. *geb- 'give' < *gHebH- < *kHVpH-; Lat. habe:re 'have', Slavic
> gabati (cf. Polish nagabywac "to ply, to molest") < *gHabHe:- < *kHVpHe:-
Oh, my, such multiple reflexes! BTW *ko:pjan- is reflected only in
English, so it isn't quite legitimate to label it "Germanic", and it's
had plenty of other meanings beside 'keep' (I'd say that the central
meaning in Old English was 'watch, keep an eye on sb./sth.'). Now if you
want to derive Germanic *xaf- and *geb- from the same PIE root, I can't
follow you into such methodological laissez-fairism. I don't exclude the
possibility that *kap- and *gHabH- are somehow distantly related, but if
so, the connection goes beyond reconstructible PIE and I have little to
say about it.
> Btw. Latin capio, capere, ce:pi: as if < *káp- is also no evidence,
cf. facio, facere, fe:ci: with the reduced grade of the root in Present
as well (but nobody denies facio < *dhH-k-)
First, the mysterious *k extension in this word, wherever it comes from,
is Italic, not PIE. Secondly, we can posit a virtual *dH&1-k-jé/ó- (with
a vocalised first laryngeal) to account for <facio:>, but we can't do
the same for <capio:>! The reason is that Germanic *xafjan- can only
reflect barytone *káp-je/o- with an accented full vowel in the first
syllable (corroborated by Gk. kápto:, generally reagarded as a cognate).
In other words, <capio:> belongs with *spék^-je/o-, not with
*gWm.-jé/ó-. BTW, you can't explain Lat. ce:pi even by assuming
*kHeh1p-, if you want to analyse Alb. kam as above. Wrong laryngeal,
wrong vowel. In my opinion, kam is simply *kap-mi (for *kap-jo:),
secondarily athematic on the analogy of *h1es-mi.
What I propose instead is this:
*ke:p-, an acrostatic root aorist (whose vocalism is reflected in Latin
ce:pi:), with the regularly derived present *kép-je/o- > *káp-je/o-
(coloration by *k). The expected thematic deverbatives are
*kó:p-o-/-a-h2, also attested in the comparative evidence. No arbitrary
metatheses and/or multiple reflexes are required.
Piotr