Re: THEORY: Evolution of infixes/ablaut?

Eric Christopherson wrote:

> At 05:03 PM 3/22/2000 +0000, yl-ruil wrote:
> >John Cowan wrote:
> >
> > > yl-ruil wrote:
> > >
> > > > After a quick consultation with my Etymological Dictionary, it seems eke
> > > > (vb) and eke (adj) are unconnected. The adj is from OE éc "also",
> >cognate to
> > > > German auch "of uncertain origin" and the vb is from éacan "grow", which
> >is
> > > > cognate to Latin augere.
> > >
> > > Well, so speaks the voice of authority, but I wonder why auch and augere
> > > can't be cognates: no sound-shift seems to prevent it.
> >
> >I'm not sure, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
>
> It seems to me that German auch would be from PIE *auk, whereas Latin
> augere would be from *aug; unless perhaps the ch in <auch> comes from the
> affricate shift in German, but I've never heard of /k/ undergoing that
> shift in the standard dialect (/p/ > /pf/; /t/ > /ts/; but not /k/ > /kx/).
Not really.  According to my dictionary of IE roots, Latin "augere" comes from
PIE *aug- "to increase", while German <auch> and English <eke> both come
from PIE *au-ge- (> Germanic *au-ke-)  and is not a root, but a pronominal
used more or less as a base on which to append suffixes.  High German did
indeed have that soundshift you mention, but /kx/ later simplified to /x/, just as
many of the earlier /x/s later simplified to /h/.

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: trwier
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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