At 7:13:33 PM on Wednesday, March 15, 2006, andrew jarrette
wrote:
[...]
> I thought word-initially PIE *gWH became /w/ in Germanic
> -- the classical examples are /warmaz/ from *gWHormos,
> /welTjaz/ ("wild") from *gWHelt- (Ir. geilt, Welsh
> gwyllt), and I think also /wundo:/ from the *gWHen- root
> (although in most or all of these cases some scholars have
> suggested other origins, with IE *w- in each case).
It's a bit more complicated than that: *gWHn-tya: > Gmc.
*gunþjo: (OHG <gund>, ON <gunnr>) looks solid enough. Lass
says somewhere that *gWH > *G before back vowels and
consonants, while *gWH > *w otherwise (and to *Gw after
nasals (as in ON <syngva> 'to sing', but that obviously
doesn't apply to word-initial *gWH).
Besides that, some, including Watkins, would derive Gmc.
*ban-o:n (ON <bana> 'slayer', etc.) from *gWHon- and Gmc.
*bidjan 'to pray, entreat' from *gWHedH-yo-, adding *b to
the menagerie.
[...]
Brian