🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <memo.854872@cix.compulink.co.uk>, petex@cix (Peter Christian) writes:
>In-Reply-To: <1993Jan8.002108.20583@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson)

>>There is (may be) more at work in Germanic than assimilations.  There are a
>>few lexical items which do not show the expected development *k<w> > *x<w>,
>>but rather *k<w> > *f.  Whether *k<w> > **p in some environment prior to
>>Grimm's law, or afterwards *x<w> -> *f, is indeterminate.  But besides the
>>evidence of "5," we have other words such as "wolf," Gothic Wulfila "Little
>>Wolf" < *wlk<w>o-.
>
>Also Latin lupus, though the Oxford Etymological Dictionary says this is a
>dialect form. (I thought they *all* were!)

Ah, but Latin has clearly borrowed from one or more dialects and languages in
its surroundings:  Compare, for example, the expected ruber "red" < *Xrudhros
(cf. Skt. rudhra-, Gk. eruthros) with the personal name Rufus "red-beard."
-- 
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@leland.stanford.edu                              _The Lost Road_