Re: Speaking of books... (and a spot of 3B)

veritosproject@GMAIL.COM skrev:
 > No 'p' of 'f' in an IE lang for 'father'?

There are a number of ways *p can be lost, although the most
common path is illustrated by Celtic:

*p > *p\ > *h > 0

E.g. (Old?) Irish for 'father' is _athair_.

FWIW Celtic languages seem to have a propensity for first
developing and then again losing /h/ in various ways.

Japanese also has gone through *p > *p\ > h, although there
[p\] is preserved as allophone of /h/ before /M/, e.g. what
is commonly Anglicized as _Fuji_ is actually /hMzi/ modulo
vowel quantities.

*p\ > xv) doesn't strike me as very improbable.

There are also a number of semantic paths along which
_*patHr_ might be replaced by something else. Attested
possibilities are _*gjenHto:r_ (cf. Skt. _janitar_, Lat.
_genitor_, and cf. how nursery words like _papa_ and _dada_
easily can and have replaced the PIE roots for relatives in
various languages. My 8 y-o son is hardly aware of _fa(de)r_
as an alternative Swedish word for _pappa_.
--

/BP 8^)
--
   B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Truth, Sir, is a cow which will give [skeptics] no more milk,
and so they are gone to milk the bull."
                                     -- Sam. Johnson (no rel. ;)

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