Cowgill's law (Germanic)

Cowgill's law[1] says that a PIE laryngeal /h₃/, and possibly /h₂/, turns into /k/ in Proto-Germanic when directly preceded by a sonorant and followed by /w/. This law is named after Indo-Europeanist Warren Cowgill.

This law is still controversial, although increasingly accepted. Donald Ringe (2006) "tentatively" accepts it;[1]: 70  Andrew Sihler (1995) is noncommittal.[2]: 168 

Examples are fairly few:

The first two examples, however, have good alternative explanations which don't involve Cowgill's law:

  • Proto-Germanic *kwikwaz < PIE *gʷi-gʷh₃-(w)ó-.[3]
  • Proto-Germanic *unki < PIE *n̥h₁ ge acc./dat. du. "us two at least" (other accusative personal pronouns may have been built the same way: Proto-Germanic *miki acc. sg. "me", *þiki acc. sg. "you (sg.)", and *inki acc./dat. du. "you two" ).[4]

If the sound law becomes generally accepted, the relative chronology of this law could have consequences for the possible reconstructed phonetic values of /h₂/ and /h₃/. If it occurred before Grimm's law, then its immediate output must have been /g/, as /k/ would have become /x/ by Grimm's law. This would have been more likely if the affected laryngeals were voiced velar obstruents to begin with.[1]: 70 [5]: 143n1  Ringe does believe that Cowgill's Law applied before Grimm's, but his reasoning relies on the 'brother-in-law' example (and thus the conclusion about the laryngeals being voiced would apply to /h₂/ as much as /h₃/). If that example is considered invalid, he admits that either relative chronology is then possible.

History

Hirt (1931)[6] observed that PIE *w was reflected as *k in a handful of words in Germanic, but was unable to explain the phenomenon. Austin (1946, 1958)[7][8] attributed this to the presence of a preceding laryngeal, and proposed many additional examples, which have been described as "questionable" by Ringe[1]: 69 . His version of the law applied to any laryngeal, and to *y as well as *w, but also required the laryngeal to be preceded by an accented vowel; when an unaccented vowel preceded, he believed Holtzmann's law would apply instead.

Cowgill (1965)[5]: 143n1, 170n58, 178n72  accepted Austin's hypothesis in a modified form, stating it as applicable to *w only, and describing the conditioning as 'not yet fully worked out'. He mentioned only two examples, the words for 'alive' and 'us two'; the former, but not the latter, had already been mentioned by Austin. Katz (1998)[9] accepted 'us two' as an example and explained its development in greater detail. The term "Cowgill's Law" was used by Ringe (2006)[1]: 68 ; others have referred to it as "laryngeal hardening", e.g. Stiles (2017).[10]: 898–899 

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Ringe, Don (2006). From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic (PDF). A Linguistic History of English (1st ed.). New York City: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-928413-9. OCLC 64554645. OL 7405151M. Wikidata Q131605459.
  2. ↑ Sihler, Andrew L. (1995). New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-508345-8.
  3. ↑ Kroonen, Guus (2013). Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic. Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series, 11. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers. Head: Kwiwa- ~ *Kwikwa-. ISBN 978-90-04-18340-7.
  4. ↑ Dunkel, George E (2014). Lexikon der indogermanischen Partikeln und Pronominalstämme [Lexicon of the Indo-European Particles and Pronominal Stems]. Vol. 2. Carl Winter Universitätsverlag. pp. 281–282. ISBN 978-3-8253-5926-3.
  5. 1 2 Cowgill, Warren (1965). "Evidence in Greek". In Winter, Werner (ed.). Evidence for laryngeals. The Hague: Mouton.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  6. ↑ Hirt, Hermann (1931). Handbuch der Urgermanischen. Vol. 1. Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuchhandlung. pp. 114–115.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  7. ↑ Austin, William M. (1946). "A Corollary to the Germanic Verschärfung". Language. 22 (2): 109–11.
  8. ↑ Austin, William M. (1958). "Germanic Reflexes of Indo-European -Hy- and -Hw-". Language. 34 (2): 203–211.
  9. ↑ Katz, Joshua (1998). Topics in Indo-European personal pronouns (Ph.D. thesis). Harvard. pp. 212–224.
  10. ↑ Stiles, Patrick V. (2017). "The phonology of Germanic". In Klein, Jared; Joseph, Brian; Fritz, Matthias (eds.). Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Mouton. pp. 888–912. ISBN 978-3-11-052161-0.
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