Re: Greek hippos < ek^wos... or not?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Tavi" <oalexandre@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Joao S. Lopes" <josimo70@> wrote:
> >
> > Is it sure to consider Greek hippos < *ek^wos, despite its clear irregular
> > shift? Would we expect *epos, instead of hippos? Does hippos come from
> > another IE language, or has it no relation to PIE root. Coincidence or not,
> > the builder of Trojan Horse was called Epeios, is it a clue for an obsolete
> > *epos in older Greek?

Very likely this is no coincidence and some dialects of prehistoric Greek did maintain the expected *epos.

> > > You seemingly don't mention a third possibility: that hippos comes
> > > from another PIE root
> >
> That is, in the ortodox PIE model any item which doesn't fit into regular sound correspondences is put under a different "root". In my view, the ortodox model is inconsistent and divergent sound correspondences like in this case mean divergent word paths.

Our friend Bhr. is hardly an exponent of "orthodox PIE"; his extreme immobilist model, which precludes borrowing in pre-Roman times, demands the robotic reconstruction of PIE roots for individual words. This is nothing new; John Rhys mechanically postulated a root in *kW- to explain anything beginning with p- as P-Celtic.

> > You're right, I forgot to mention it: hippos < *sikWkWo-? *yikWkWo- ? The cluster -pp- is very uncommon in Greek. As a variant of -kk-, we can compare it to lakkos < *lak-wo-s.
> >
> Actually, Gamkrelidze-Ivanov mentioned a possible protoform *s´ik´wo-, where *s´ is their own "compact sibilant" (a rough counterpart of my own sound law regarding post-velar fricatives), giving *s- > h- in Greek and zero elsewhere, but I find little support for it.
>
> In my opinion, Greek -pp- doesn't come from *-kWkW- (which I find rather absurd) but from *-kWw- resulting from regressive assimilation of *-k´w-. Hence *-kWw- > *-pw- > -pp- by reduction and progressive assimilation (possibly these two changes were synchronic) as in *-k´w- > -kk-.

In my opinion, the Macedonian royal name Bilippos (Hellenized as Phil-) points to Mac. as the source of _hippos_, the internal consonantism being PIE *-k^w- > centumized *-kW- > Ill.-Lus. *-kkW- > P-Ill. *-kp- > Mac. *-pp- (with the -kp-stage actually attested in Lukpeio on Paeonian coins, as mentioned earlier).

DGK