[...] A PIE *swelp- 'burn, smoulder', which occurs as an attested verb in Tocharian (i.e. sälp- 'be set alight, burn', has an old nominal derivative *swélpL- (gen. *Sulplós), that shows up in Both Germanic (OE swefl) and Lat sulphur as the word for 'sulphur'(that which burns) [...]
I picked these lines from The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World (J. P. Mallory, D. Q. Adams), via Google Books.
My point is... this *swelp- seems very plausibly akin to Greek thalpos (gen. thalpous) "sun heat". Obviously a correspondence th<sw is not regular, it seems an IE "Para-Greek" adstratum. Is it plausible?
If some Para-Greek dialect has *th- < PIE *sw-, we'd be able to find more words. Let's try:
*swe- "own" > *the-
*swel- (*sh2wel-) "sun" > *thel-, *thal-
*swerd- "black, soothy" > *therd-
*swen- "to sound" > *then-
I didnt found good words fitting in this scheme, until now, although ethnonyms beginning with *THE- like Thesprotos, Thespios, Thessalos, Thestios could came from *swe-. At least thessalos/phettalos comes from *qHetYalos, which could avoid such comparation. Trying again with an usual compound *swe-bHwo- (cf. Suabii, Sabazius, svobodI, Sabinus), we may suppose a *thepho- > *tepho- (or *thebo-)
JS Lopes
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