Re: The meaning of life: PIE. *gWiH3w-

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

>
> On 2008-02-08 22:05, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > The fact that it applies in both Greek and Sanskrit indicates

that the

> > rule was an active rule, which goes back to PIE; something like
> > <aspirated>V<aspirated> -> <unaspirated>V<aspirated>, but actively
> > applied at any given stage (nice, huh? I just invented that).
>
> But Grassmann's Law operates quite differently in Greek and

Sanskrit

> (there are also traces of something similar in Tocharian), so it's

a

> convergent but independent change in each case, not a homology.

Italic,

> Germanic and Armenian preserve DH...DH roots and the contrast

between

> them and D...DH.
>

As does Celtic:

*gWHedH- 'to pray' > PCelt. *gWed- (OIr. guidid, W gweddi).

PIE *gWH- gives PCelt. *gW-, whereas PIE *gW- gives PCelt. *b-. So if
Grassmann had worked in Pre-Proto-Celtic, we should have had *bed-
instead.

But that's the only place I can think of where the contrast between
plain and aspirated stops is preserved in Celtic, so we need a root
of the structure *gWH...DH (DH being any aspirated stop).

Anders