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Cowgill's law 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) accepts it; Andrew Sihler (1995) is noncommittal.
Examples are fairly few:
- Proto-Germanic *kwikwaz "alive" (whence English quick) < PIE *gʷih₃-wos (cf. Latin: vīvus)
- Proto-Germanic *unki acc. du. "us two" (cf. Gothic: unkis, Old English: unc, Old Norse: okkr) < PIE *n̥h₃we (cf. Greek: nṓ; Ved. āvā́m acc. du. "us two" < *āva-ám)
- Possibly Old English: tācor "husband's brother" < PIE *dayh₂wḗr (cf. Greek: dāḗr, Ved. devṛ́, Latin: lēvir)
The first two examples, however, have good alternative explanations which don't involve Cowgill's law:
- Proto-Germanic *kwikwaz < PIE *gʷi-gʷh₃-(w)ó-.
- 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" ).
If the sound law becomes generally accepted, the relative chronology of this law could have consequences for a possible reconstructed phonetic value of /h₃/. Since Germanic /k/ results from earlier PIE /g/, and since the change occurred before Grimm's law applied (according to Ringe), the resulting change would be actually /h₃w/ > /gʷ/. This would have been more likely if /h₃/ was a voiced velar obstruent to begin with. If /h₃/ was a voiced labiovelar fricative as is occasionally suggested, the change would therefore have been: /ɣʷw/ > /ɡʷ/.
References
- ^ 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.
- Sihler, Andrew L. (1995). New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-508345-8.
- 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.
- 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.