🚀 go-pugleaf

In-Reply-To: <1993Jan6.101008.4885@memstvx1.memst.edu> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu

> 
> In article <memo.842322@cix.compulink.co.uk>, petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Chri
stian) writes:
> > In-Reply-To: <robrtsnj-311292101210@peirce.byu.edu> robrtsnj@yvax.byu.edu (John S
. Robertson)
> > 
> > I am right in assuming Latin quinque shows assimilation rather than a
> > genuine p > kw?
> 
> It shows a genuine p > kw *by* assimilation!

Yes, that was a careless formulation of mine, but I took it that the
original message was about regular sound changes rather than unique
assimilatory changes.

> The interesting thing is that Late Latin undid it by dissimilating the new
> kw to k: Italian _cinque_ [c^ingkwe], French _cinq_ [sae~k] etc. reflect an
> (unattested?) Vulgar Latin *_cinque_ [kingkwe].

The other interesting thing is that Germanic also had a problem with
*penkwe (or whatever) and assimilated the *other* consonant, i.e. kw
> p (the normal reflex of IE *kw being Gmc. *x). Or pehaps it was
after the First Sound Shift and the assimilation was x > f.

Peter
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Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
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