Cowgill's law, named after Indo-Europeanist

Warren Cowgill Warren Cowgill (; December 19, 1929 – June 20, 1985) was an American linguist. He was a professor of linguistics at Yale University and the Encyclopædia Britannica's authority on Indo-European linguistics. Cowgill was unusual among Indo-Europea ...

, refers to two unrelated sound changes, one occurring in

Proto-Greek The Proto-Greek language (also known as Proto-Hellenic) is the Indo-European language which was the last common ancestor of all varieties of Greek, including Mycenaean Greek, the subsequent ancient Greek dialects (i.e., Attic, Ionic, Aeo ...

and the other in

Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic bran ...

Cowgill's law in Greek

, Cowgill's law says that a former vowel becomes between a

resonant Resonance describes the phenomenon of increased amplitude that occurs when the frequency of an applied periodic force (or a Fourier component of it) is equal or close to a natural frequency of the system on which it acts. When an oscilla ...

(, , , ) and a

labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. The two common labial articulations are bilabials, articulated using both lips, and labiodentals, articulated with the lower lip against the upper teeth, bot ...

(including labiovelars), in either order. Examples: * ell, νύξ "night" < PIE ' (cf. '' lat, nox'', Ved. ' < ''*nakts'', '' got, nahts'', gen. sg. '' hit, nekuz'' /nekʷts/) * ell, φύλλον "leaf" < PIE ' (cf. '' lat, folium'') * ell, μύλη "mill" < PIE ' (cf. '' lat, molīna'') * ell, ὄνυξ "nail" (stem '' ell, ónukh-'') < early PG ' < PIE ' (cf. '' ang, nægl'' < PGerm ') Note that when a labiovelar adjoins an affected by Cowgill's law, the new will cause the labiovelar to lose its labial component (as in '' ell, núks'' and '' ell, ónuks/ónukh-'', where the usual Greek change ''*'' > ' has not occurred).

Cowgill's law in Germanic

Cowgill's law in Germanic has no relation to Cowgill's law in Greek other than having been named after the same person. It says that a PIE laryngeal , and possibly , turns into in

when directly preceded by a sonorant and followed by . This law is still controversial, although increasingly accepted. Donald Ringe (2006) accepts it;

Andrew Sihler Andrew Littleton Sihler (born 25 February 1941 in Seattle) is an American linguist and comparative Indo-Europeanist. Biography Sihler received his Bachelor of Arts ''cum laude'' in 1962 from Harvard College, where he studied Germanic languages, li ...

(1995) is noncommittal. Examples are fairly few: *

' "alive" (whence English ''quick'') < PIE ' (cf. '' lat, vīvus'') * Proto-Germanic ' acc. du. "us two" (cf. got, unkis, ang, unc, non, okkr) < PIE ' (cf. '' ell, nṓ''; Ved. ' acc. du. "us two" < ') * Possibly '' ang, tācor'' "husband's brother" < PIE ' (cf. '' ell, dāḗr'', Ved. ', '' lat, lēvir'') The first two examples, however, have good alternative explanations which don't involve Cowgill's law: * Proto-Germanic ' < PIE '. * Proto-Germanic ' < PIE ' acc./dat. du. "us two at least" (other accusative personal pronouns may have been built the same way: Proto-Germanic ' acc. sg. "me", ' acc. sg. "you (sg.)", and ' acc./dat. du. "you two" ). If the sound law becomes generally accepted, the relative chronology of this law could have consequences for a possible reconstructed phonetic value of . Since Germanic results from earlier PIE , and since the change occurred before Grimm's law applied (according to Ringe), the resulting change would be actually > . This would have been more likely if was a voiced velar obstruent to begin with. If was a voiced labiovelar fricative as is occasionally suggested, the change would therefore have been: > .

Notes

References

* *{{cite book, last=Sihler, first=Andrew L., authorlink=Andrew L. Sihler, title=New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, publisher=Oxford University Press, year=1995, isbn=0-19-508345-8 Indo-European linguistics Sound laws