Re: Existence of PIE

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:

>
> At 12:48:24 PM on Tuesday, January 29, 2008, tgpedersen wrote:

> > So Germanic /w/ was adopted into Northern French, Lorraine
> > and Champagne as /w/ and into the rest of Western Romance
> > as /gw/ in two separate processes?
>
> I have no idea what you mean by 'two separate processes'.

> > Bear in mind that that /w-/ from American native names
> > (written hu-) have no problem coexisting in Spanish with
> > B/v.
>
> So? Different time, different place, different language(s).

Torsten is proposing that living Late Latin had both /w/ and /v/ (or
/B/), and notes a very similar system has reappeared in Spanish. Now
in Spanish, initial /w/ may be realised as [gw]. The same may also
have been true of Late Latin - what we do see clearly is regional
variation between /w/ and /gw/.

Now, there are some differences between the Spanish and Late Latin
situations. For example, Spanish has /w/ in native words such as
_huevo_ 'egg'.

Richard.