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

On 2008-03-18 18:43, fournet.arnaud wrote:

> If we read Meillet Et. Dict. Latin p 23,
>
> Germanic cannot be from *H2egwnos
> and must be from *H2eghwnos
> Especially OE eanian.

This is accounted for by the modern formulation of Kluge's Law. In the
Vernerian context, *-kWn-, *-gWn- and *-gWHn- all gave *-gWn-. Unlike
other stops in such a combination, this did not turn into a geminate;
instead, *gW was weakened to *w, yielding *-wn-. You can see that in
*sekW-ní- > *sigWní- > *siwni- > *siuni- 'sight' and in *h2agWnó- >
*agWná- > *awna- > *auna-, hence the denominative verb preserved in OE.

> Now if we accept *H2aghwnos
> then we have a problem with Greek amnos.

Preacisely. So we had better not accept it.

> Next point is Slavic has a long â
> in agne/agnici,
> How do you account for this long vowel ?

Winter's Law (vowel lengthening before "plain voiced" stops), not yet
discovered in Meillet's times. Actually, the long vowel proves that the
stop is *gW, not *gWH.

> Celtic forms have #o as initial not #a-

The Celtic forms (PCelt. *ognos) _are_ problematic. The initial *o- may
be due to contamination with *h2owis, and the stop seems to have
undergone delabialisation.

> How do you explain or account for all this ?
>
> What is a fairly straightforward cognate ?

*h2agWno- explains everything straightforwardly, the sole exception
being the Celtic reflex, which looks slightly aberrant.

Piotr