Re: [tied] Latin /a/ after labials, IE *mori

Check with a Celtic scholar and definitely correct me but Irish mara would have a "broad" m, associated with velar pronunciation (as opposed to palatal) while the difference of pronunciation of muir would mainly be the palatalized r (I´m trying to figure out how to use a Spanish keyboard, so forgive the lack of brackets and such) but I don´t know how much difference there was in earlier Irish between the vowels in such an environment.

Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@...> wrote:

Awhile back we had a bit of a discussion about the idea of Latin <a>
after labials representing IE *o, the classic example being Latin <mare>
representing IE *mori (we also talked a bit about Latin /a/ sometimes
possibly representing IE *e). But if this was a regular change, I have
found words which seems to be an exception: Latin <moni:le>
"necklace", from IE *mon- "neck" which is also found in English <mane> and Old English <mene> "necklace"; <moneo:> "remind, admonish"; <mons> "mountain", <mox> "soon, presently". If IE *o regularly became Latin /a/ after
labials, shouldn't the Latin words be *<mani:le>, *<maneo:>, *<mans>, *<max>? Or could the IE word for
"sea" have been *mari after all? I'd like to point out that the Old
Irish word for sea, <muir>, has the form <mara> in the genitive singular and nominative plural, and the Cornish word <mo:r> has the compositional form <mari-> (according to Stuart Mann's IE dictionary).

Did Latin really change any *o after a labial to /a/, or was an IE *a preserved in *mari and other words?

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