--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> W dniu 2012-02-13 22:03, dgkilday57 pisze:
>
> > With the fading of the prolongative sense of *-t-, *dHug^H&2ter-
> > 'milker, milkmaid' was then formed analogically (root *dHeug^H-, as
> > in Skt. -duh 'milking'). Greek in this view absorbed the laryngeal,
> > *-g^H&2- > -ga-, as in <me'ga>.
>
> It was *meg^h2-, not *meg^Hh2-: Germanic *mek-, Armenian mec, which
> leaves the "laryngeal absorption" in <tHugáter> unsupported. Now if the
> 'daughter' word was *dHugh2ter- (as usually reconstructed), the link
> with *dHeugH- 'to milk, press' (sic! with *gH, not *g^H) is hard to
> maintain.
I confused *dHeugH- with *dHeug^H- 'to avail, be propitious' which would make a lousy etymon for 'daughter' in a society where a father has to scrape together a dowry to unload one.
I was thinking along the lines of what I proposed in message #68472 to answer the gradation problem of Gmc. *maG- and *o:G- and their relatives. That is, absorption of *h2 (but not *&2) by a following *gH would entail:
/e/-grade *meh2gH- > *mah2gH- > *magH- > InIr *magH-, etc.
/o/-grade *moh2gH- > *mogH- > Gmc. *maG-
nil-grade *m&2gH- > Gmc. *maG-, Grk. *ma:kH-
For 'daughter', I would have to assume *gH&2t > *g&2t > -gat- in Greek, elsewhere *gH&2t > *gHt. This would explain the absence of a laryngeal footprint in Armenian, Gmc., and Balto-Slavic. It would also explain why the Avestan for 'daughter' seems to have undergone Bartholomae's Law, which is generally blocked by a laryngeal. But the Skt. form would require a tricky analogical restoration on the basis of other kinship terms. On the whole, this approach is not likely to yield satisfactory results for 'daughter'.
DGK