Laryngeals and s Movable

and smelt, and Gk. riyos and arTyos, both meaning 'roof'. Several decades ago s movable was much discussed. Some scholars explained it by a sandhi alternation in which initial s before a consonant was lost after a final consonant of the preceding word, with later leveling and perhaps analogical spread of s to roots which had not originally had it. Others thought the s the remnant of a prefix whose meaning had become obscured. Our reference books usually leave the matter there, as one of the minor uncertainties of IE phonology. On the whole, the champions of the prefix theory, like Siebs,1 had the stronger case; but there was one major difficulty. If s movable represents a prefix, one would expect to find it not only before stops and sonants but also before vowels. For this, Siebs could find few plausible examples.2 Today of course the question appears in a different light. Hittite examples like istanta(e)'tarry' beside titta'cause to stand'3 seem to prove what was probable anyhow, namely that the alternation existed in Indo-Hittite-or, if one prefers, before the general disappearance of the laryngeals in the non-Hittite branches of Indo-European. Where Siebs expected simply s plus a vowel, we must therefore reckon with a sequence s plis laryngeal plus vowel; for we may be certain that no IH word began with a vowel. Unless a laryngeal after initial s gives exactly the same result as initially, Siebs' failure to find substantial evidence may conceivably be due to the fact that he was unprepared to deal with the effects of laryngeals on their environment. Consider the following etymologies: (1) Skt apn6ti 'reaches'; Lat. apiunt 'they fasten', aptus 'handy', co-jpi 'I began'; Arm. unim 'possess'; Hitt. epzi 'he takes, begins' Av. hapti 'holds in his hands'; Skt. sdpati 'worships, is attached to'; Gk. 4-rw 'get done', 6irXov 'tool, weapon'. (2) Skt. r with drna'flowing, flood'; OHG rinnan 'flow'; Skt. pf. r Hitt. arer'arrive' Skt. sdrati 'hastens, flows', sard'liquid'; Gk. (Ion.?) op6s and Lat. serum 'whey'. (3) Gk. apros 'protection', apKow 'aid, suffice'; Lat. arx 'fortress', arce6 'ward off'; Arm. argel 'obstacle'; Hitt. larkanzi 'they have' Gk. fpKos 'wall, pro tection', by some connected with Lat. sarcia 'mend'. (4) OHG ano 'ancestor', ana 'ancestress'; OPr. ane 'grandmother'; Lat. anus

Ancient Near East History · History · Linguistics and Cultural Studies · Linguistics and language evolution

• Preverbs, Prepositions and Adverbs

  Open Access•Paul Russell•Transactions of the Philological…•1988

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• Retracing the phonesthemic {gr-/prehension}, {sm-/oral phenomena} and {sn-/nasality} relations in English to Proto-Indo-European and beyond within a semiogenetic perspective

  Open Access•Dennis Philps•Lingua•2022

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