On 2006-09-20 10:43, tgpedersen wrote:
> I note with interest that likkon "lick" seems to be foreign in
> Germanic, since I've proposed it's related to Sino-Tibetan and
> Old Chinese words for "feed, rear animals" etc (which prehaps
> might help rehabilitate Rulen's 'Proto-World' *m-l-k-, at least
> in its sense "milk").
Kluge's Law, despite being discussed by Brugmann, Martinet, Prokosch and
others, remained practically forgotten (or at least largely ignored) for
a hundred years or so until its full vindication in Rosemarie Lühr's
Habilitationsschrift (1988). It's now clear that many (of course not
all) instances of *-tt- alternating with *-ð- and/or *-þ-, or with
single *-t- are due to nasal assimilation, including many of the
geminates routinely regarded as expressive, substratal or what not. See,
in particular, Paul Hopper's "Remarks" and Jens Rasmussen's "Erwiderung
auf Paul J. Hoppers 'Remarks'" in Theo Vennemann (ed.), 1989, _The New
Sound of Indo-European: Essays in Phonological Reconstruction_,
Berlin/New York.
I see no reason at all to regard the verb stem *likko:- (OHG leccho:n
etc.) as foreign in Germanic. The verb *leig^H-, originally a root
formation (*léig^H-ti, *lig^H-énti) had derivatives with secondary nasal
suffixes in several groups (Slavic *lIz-noN-ti, Gk. likH-neú-o:
'taste'); *lig^H-náh2- fits that pattern very nicely.
Piotr