Re: OT: Double asterisk (was Re: Exhibit Coverage Continues!)
| From: | Eric Christopherson <rakko@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, June 13, 2008, 3:12 |
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On Jun 11, 2008, at 3:51 PM, Philip Newton wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 15:34, Henrik Theiling
> <theiling@...> wrote:
>> **Henrik
>
> What does this mean? It's an incorrect reconstructed form of your
> name? :)
>
> (At least, those are the two uses of preposed apostrophes that came to
> my mind first.)
I've seen ** used to signify something posited for a protolanguage on
the basis of internal reconstruction (internal to that
protolanguage). Thus PIE had a word *g_wo:m meaning "cow" in the
accusative singular, but it's reasonable to believe that it was once
**g_wowm, because that would be the expected outcome of a root *g_wow
plus the accusative marker *-m.