tgpedersen wrote:
> BTW it's interesting as Arnoud points out that Germanic -VwV- becomes
> French -VvV- *trewa > trève, since English does something similar in
> inherited Germanic vocabulary, eg wave.
How do you analyse <wave>? I think the standard etymology derives it
from ME waven < OE wafian 'to wave'. In ME it partly fell together
orthographically with the nearly synonymous <wa3en, wawen> from OE
wagian 'to move backwards and forward, totter, shake', since a spelling
like <wauen ~ waven> was ambiguous. Still, neither of these verbs had an
original /w/, and OE wafian, in particular, comes from the root *webH-
'move to and fro'.
Piotr