From: Arnaud Fournet
Message: 62456
Date: 2009-01-11
----- Original Message -----
From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 2:05 PM
Subject: [tied] *n,W- -> nVw-, or ....?
I like the phoneme /n,W/, the labiovelar nasal. That's why (or may be
the other way round) I proposed it might have occurred in words i PIE
languages. I proposed (but now I can't find it) that since /n,W/
becomes either /w/, /n/ or /m/, by seeing those phonemes as variants,
one could propose a common origin for sets of words which could be
organized as having such a set of variants. Turns out that one
sequence of sets of words is linked semantically: water (variants with
w-, m-, n-), net (n-, w-), attack/transport;crew (n-, w-).
[...]
Abzulehnen ist Bernekers Annahme eines Ablautes ne- zu na-, dann die
Verbindung mit aind. ná:us., avest. apers. na:v-, griech. nau~s
'Schiff, lat. na:vis, ir. nau dass. (gegen Pogodin Sledy 223, s.
Iljinskij IF. 50,60ff).
[...]
But the best solution would be, since Slavic already has
transport-verbs in v- and n-, to propose *n,Wed-t-, a ppp form of the
transport verb -> *newest- . Case solved.
Torsten
======
Salish has s-neXw-L "canoe" with a velar fricative.
Klallam word 820.
http://www.lingtechcomm.unt.edu/~montler/Klallam/WordList/index.htm
A.