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Cowgill's law (Germanic)

Cowgill's law says that a PIE laryngeal , and possibly , turns into in Proto-Germanic when directly preceded by a sonorant and followed by . 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 ' "alive" (whence English quick) < PIE ' (cf. ')
  • Proto-Germanic ' acc. du. "us two" (cf. , , ) < PIE ' (cf. '; Ved. ' acc. du. "us two" < ')
  • Possibly ' "husband's brother" < PIE ' (cf. ', Ved. ', ')

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

  • Proto-Germanic ' < PIE '.
  • Proto-Germanic ' < PIE ' acc./dat. du. "us two at least" (other accusative personal pronouns may have been built the same way: Proto-Germanic ' acc. sg. "me", ' acc. sg. "you (sg.)", and ' acc./dat. du. "you two" ).

Since Germanic results from earlier PIE , and since the change occurred before Grimm's law applied (according to Ringe), the resulting change would be actually > . This would have been more likely if was a voiced velar obstruent to begin with. If was a voiced labiovelar fricative as is occasionally suggested, the change would therefore have been: > .

See also

References