From: Mate Kapović
Message: 45054
Date: 2006-06-23
>Assimilation of *farba to barba, *f-b > b-b.
> --- 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
>>
>
> Please excuse my incompetence for attributing Grimm's Law to the
> changing of PIE <*bh> to Latin <f>. What I was wondering, and still am,
> is the reason for the unexpected initial <b> in Latin <barba>, a cognate
> of English <beard>.