From: H.M. Hubey
Message: 670
Date: 2003-06-18
> ---Ok, I see what you mean now. When comparing forms without looking into
>
> Sorry, I didn't read carefully enough. I was skimming because I hope
> to look throught these lists in more detail later.
>
> Germanic (as a group or proto-language) has next to nothing to do
> with the relationship of English nephew and Latin nepos, nepot-. The
> connecting route is English nephew < (Old) French neveu < Latin
> nepotem. (I have missed out some intermediate stages because I don't
> have my reference books to hand.) The intervocal Latin /t/ was, as
> usual, ultimately dropped in the development of the Old French form.
> English then borrowed the Old French word, the English spelling was
> modified to better match the Latin original, and in many people's
> speech the pronunciation has followed. The English-French-Latin
> correspondences in this word are n-n-n, e-e-e, ph-v-p, ew-eu-o, 0-0-
> t, 0-0-em. No w-t required! Kondrak looked at algorithms which can
> achieve this level of matching in the thesis to which you posted a
> reference at this group, and notes the correct matching in the
> relationship of English wolf and Latin lupus (i.e. l-l and f-p).
>
> The nepot- stem is PIE, which I think is the point you wanted to
> make. I can't say I like the suggested Nostratic *k > PIE *p
> correspondence, though I can dimly see how it might just be a
> conditioned change spread by analogy. There are some German forms in
> Pokorny one could be tempted to reach down to, but that would be
> demonstrably wrong.
>
> Richard.
>--