Re: swallow vs. nighingale

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Grzegorz Jagodzinski"
<grzegorj2000@...> wrote:

>
> And my notices about words mentioned in this thread.
>
> 0. General notice. Contrary to Neo-grammarian believers, I doubt in
> existence absolute phonetic rules in general

> 1. "Goose", Latin anser. This word comes from rural dictionary, i.e.

it is

> dialectal, and then without the expected h- < IE *g^h-. Polish ga,sior
> "gander" (= he-goose) may have the same suffix -er- (even if

thematicized,

> i.e. in the original form *-ero-, in Slavic).

It had *-oro- but was contaminated with pal. from *ghansis.

> Some satem languages give
> evidence for *g^h- here, so Slavic go,si^ (i^ = soft yer) "goose" is

a part

> of the kentum vocabulary (some join it with Italian substrate in the

history

> of the Slavic branch, some suppose that g^(h) ... s > g(h) ...s - the
> original palatal hardened when an "s" was in the word).

This depal. is completely regular in Slavic:

KY > K before a unless a was followed by K

(assuming H2 = x)

> 2. "Swallow". An interesing word. Latin hirundo and Greek khelidwo:n

are

> believed not to be cognates by ultra-neogrammarians (God be with

them). I

> see no reason for denying that they are cognates. I see also no

reason for

> naming one of the forms "corrupted" (in fact, both are "corrupted"

in such

> or another way). Of course they did not develop regularly, and there is
> nothing strange in it. These are just non-motivated words (with no

clear

> word-formation structure and obscure meaning of the root). I need no

more

> explanation beyond this statement. Just such isolated words do develop
> irregularly, by their nature. Searching for reasons why we have -r-

in Latin

> vs. -l- in Greek, why -u- in Latin but -i- in Greek, why -nd- in Latin
> and -dw- in Greek means just wasting of time.

Not at all; if there are other Latin words with l>r in a specific
environment they could show a regular rule. The change of *gWdelu+ >>
hiru:do: 'leech' suggests it is so.