Re: Existence of PIE

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
wrote:

>
> 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.

Off the top of my head, as usual. But it seems to me English has a
rule that demands -VvV-, at least in some contexts?

> Still, neither of these verbs had an original /w/, and OE wafian,
> in particular, comes from the root *webH- 'move to and fro'.

I'm not so sure it's that simple. Dutch has wapperen "flutter" (eg.
like a flag) and waaien id.(approx.), which is (was) strong.
http://tinyurl.com/yq3mk3
Possibly from t-less 3sg pres. of compensatory long-vowel (because
of loss of stem auslaut consonant) version of PIE *webh- with
primary i-suffix?

Torsten