Re: [tied] Germanic fleuhan and fleugan

On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 21:26:08 -0400 (EDT), Andrew Jarrette
<anjarrette@...> wrote:

>The Germanic verb *fleuhan ("flee") would be expected to
>go back to PIE *pleuk-, would it not? If so, what does
>*fleugan ("fly") go back to? A *pleugh- would contain
>the sequence p..gh which is not tolerated in PIE verb
>phonology (i.e. voiceless plosive followed by voiced
>aspirated plosive). One would think then that *fleugan
>also goes back to PIE *pleuk-, with Germanic -g- imported
>from the past plural and participle where it would be
>regular from *k by Verner's Law. So are *fleuhan and
>*fleugan originally one and the same verb? Why then did
>all Germanic languages develop two different verbs with
>different meanings from the same root, if it was originally
>one root? Or could there have been a sequence p..gh in PIE?

The prohibition against p..gh only applies within the root
itself, not to so-called "root extensions". The root here
is *pleu-, and *pleu-k- as well as *pleu-gh- (and *pleu-g-)
are possible in principle. However, "flee" and "fly" are
both from *pleu-k-, one with generalization of *-h-, the
other with generalization of Verner *-g- (Gothic, which
generally gets rid of Verner alternations, used a different
device: "to flee" is þliuhan with þl- for fl-, although the
"fly"-verb appears to not be attested in Gothic).

I'm not sure why my edition of Kluge's et.dict. of German
claims that "fliegen" is "unverwandt" with "fliehen", while
deriving both from the same PIE root *pleu(k)-. Typo for
"urverwandt"?

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