Re: [tied] Re: Allofamy, allofams

On 2006-07-05 15:45, tgpedersen wrote:

> I recall seeing a couple of names of creepi-crawlies which, oddly,
> had we,- in Polish and a- or o- elsewhere. I'll look them up.

If you mean <wa,z.> 'snake' (gen. <we,z.a>), the /v/ comes from the
prothetic glide *w, obligatorily added before some rounded vowels, in
particular nasal *oN, in the immediate ancestor of Polish (cf. Russ.
uz^, without prothesis). The Slavic protoform was *oNz^I, which is the
same thing as Baltic *angis and Lat. anguis.

Piotr