From: dgkilday57
Message: 68416
Date: 2012-01-25
>According to Lehmann (PIE Phon. chh. 11-14), I have confused *h2 and *h4 in much of my post. Lehmann's notation is somewhat tricky, but when he divided de Saussure's /a/-coloring laryngeal -A- into two phones, -x- denoted our *h2 (reflected as a consonant in Hittite when PIE */e/ followed) and -h- denoted *h4 (not so reflected). Now, the connection between Lat. <mu:ta:re> and Skt. <methati> was proposed by Sturtevant, using -x-, which is the basis of de Vaan's PIE *meith2- 'to exchange, remove', the citation form in the LIV (cf. PIE Phon. ch. 11, §4). However, Kuryl/owicz observed that -t- is not aspirated before the Skt. 1sg. perf. suffix -a, which on the basis of Grk. -a, Hitt. -hi (*he-i, *ha-i?) was taken as *-xa, colored from *-xe, i.e. *-h2e. Therefore, Lehmann took -h-, not -x-, as the laryngeal which produced Skt. -th-, and derived Lat. <sta:re> from *steh- (i.e. *steh4-, PIE Phon. ch. 12, §5c). My error arose from blindly following Mallory & Adams, who cite *steh2-.
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> This thread from 2008, in which evidence was presented for Kluge's assimilation in Celtic, got me thinking that the peculiar present stem of Latin <mitto:> 'I send', against <mi:si:> 'I sent' and <missus> 'sent', might be analyzed the same way. Old Latin <cosmittere> (Paul. Fest.) for <committere> 'to join, entrust to, commit' shows that the Proto-Indo-European root began with *sm-. It has been identified by some as *smeit- 'to throw', recognized in Avestan <mae:þ-> 'to throw', <hamista-> (*ham-[h]mista-) 'downcast, oppressed', etc. (Pokorny, IEW 968). The fricative in <mae:þ-> suggests that the Iranian words in fact reflect PIE *smeith2-, from which Lat. *mititus rather than <missus> would be expected, and the gemination in <mitto:> is not adequately explained.
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> De Vaan (Et. Dict. of Lat. and the Other Itc. Lgs. s.v., 2008) dismisses <cosmittere> as untrustworthy and argues instead for derivation from PIE *meith2- 'to exchange, remove'. This root is supported by Sanskrit <methete> 'he becomes hostile, quarrels' (i.e. 'exchanges blows'), Germanic *maidaz 'changed, abnormal' (Old English <gema:d> 'insane, mad'), Lat. <mu:to:> 'I (ex)change, remove', and other words. De Vaan places South Picene <meitims> nom. sg., <meitimúm> acc. sg. 'monument' here also. Again however the root-final laryngeal should give Lat. *mititus; there is no basis for dropping it to get *meit- going into Proto-Italic. De Vaan at least recognizes the difficulty of deriving <mittere> from *mi:tere by the so-called littera-rule (i.e. -V:C- replaced by -VCC-, dialectal as explained below) since there is no trace of *mi:tere.