----- Original Message -----
From: <tgpedersen@...>
To: <Nostratica@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 2:28 PM
Subject: [Nostratica] Re: Cardinal and Ordinal Integers


> Note also Greek kukl-, not the regular reflex of PIE /kW/. That variation also points towards a loan.

This variation only shows that the reflexes of former labiovelars were treated somewhat incinsistently in Classical Greek. That was because the elimination of the labiovelars involved several stages whose chronology and outcome differed from dialect to dialect. Matters were further complicated by interaction with other processes and by interdialectal borrowing (cf. tessares ~ tettares ~ tetores ~ pettares ~ petores ~ pisures ~ pesures '4' -- an inherited but highly variable word). Labiovelars were also potential vowel-colourers in pre-Greek. If an adjacent vowel was coloured into *u, the consonant dropped its phonological labialisation and developed further like an ordinary velar, cf. <nuks> 'night', <gune:> 'woman' (vs. Beotian bana:) or <lukos> 'wolf'. In *kWekWlo- the vowel, sandwitched between labiovelars, underwent assimilation > *kWukWlo-, which yielded *kuklo- before the change of *kW into *p or *t.

Piotr