Eichner’s law in Latin, Greek and beyond: some neglected evidence

Abstract

AbstractAccording to a phonetic rule commonly referred to asEichner’s law, the quality of a long *ēwas not affected by an adjacent laryngeal *h2or *h3in the prehistory of the individual Indo-European languages: Latinspērāre‘hope’ < *spēh2-s-(desiderative), Old Slavicspěti‘be successful’ < *spēh2-(cf. *sph2-ró-in Ved.sphirá-and Lat.prosperus; *speh2-i-s-in Old Slavicspěxŭ); Tocharian Byerpe<*h3ērbh-o-‘disk, orb’ (without colouration) versus Latinorbis< *h3orbh-i-‘circle’. The purpose of the article is not to reassess the value of all reconstructions involving Eichner’s law, but to focus primarily on two neglected examples supporting its validity: Latinīdūs< *h2ēid-‘Ides’, a term originally referring to the full moon, for which a connection withaemidus< *h2eid-(a term glossed astumidus) can plausibly be argued; Greek ἔγκατα < *h2ēnk-‘mass of the inner organs of the thorax and of the upper part of the abdomen’ related to ὄγκος ‘swelling, tumour, bulk’ (from an older meaning ‘curvature’; the word constantly refers tovolume, not to weight). The striking structural parallelism between ἔγκατα < *h2ḗnk-r/n-‘pluck’ (with Osthoff-shortening) and ἧπαρ < *(H)yḗkw-r/n-‘liver’ requires a close reexamination of the latter word and a detailed discussion of the puzzling vocalism of Lat.iecur, gen.iocineris. The study aims at offering a careful analysis of these items, taking into account their precise semantics and the relevant comparative data. Particular emphasis will be laid upon the derivational processes responsible for the morphological shape of the lexemes under discussion. It will appear that the Classical languages, especially Latin, can make a decisive contribution to the understanding of the morphology of lengthened-grade formations, which in turn offer new insights into the history of the Latin and Greek lexicons.