Re: [tied] Latin barba in disaccord with Grimm's Law?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> On 2006-06-19 06:32, junk554 wrote:
>
> > Why does barba, the Latin word for beard, not begin with an f?
> > According to the First Sound Shift or Grimm's Law, Indo-European bh-
> > became f- in Latin and b- in Germanic.
>
> No. Grimm's Law says nothing about Latin. It only says PIE *bH became
> Germanic *B, so if the PIE prototype was *bHardhah2, everything is all
> right on the Germanic side. If, on the other hand, it was *bardHah2,
> then the Latin reflex is OK and we have what looks like a failure of
> Grimm's Law. Balto-Slavic *b- in this word proves nothing either

way, so

> it's ultimately a question of Latin vs. Germanic. Sice PIE *b is rare
> and there are a few possible (if rare) examples of sporadic

Grassmannian

> dissimilation in Latin, the reconstruction *bHardHah2 is generally

given

> preference.
>
> Piotr

******
Pokorny, in his nonlaryngeal style, gives *bhardha as the root
and comments "Lat. barba `Bart' (assimil. aus *far-ba)".
More important, he relates it to the root Root: *bhares-, *bhores-
"point, stubble", which offers an additional number of reflexes
that, if I'm reading them right, seem to support Piotr's suggestion.
In particular, one cited, not by Pokorny but by Buck,is Skt. <bhrsti->
(with dots under r, s and t) "point, edge".
Dan