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From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Loss of Initial Sigma in Ancient Greek
In-Reply-To: ftilley@indirect.com's message of Fri, 19 May 1995 03:42:05 GMT
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Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 21:25:56 GMT
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In article <D8t3M6.Bur@indirect.com> ftilley@indirect.com (Felix E. Tilley Jr.)
writes:

>How or when did Ancient Greek lose the initial sigma in such English cognates
>as SIX or SEVEN?  If you don't know HOW it happened, do you know WHEN it
>happened.

In the history of the Indo-European dialect which comes down to us as classical
Greek, *s is lost initially and between vowels.  Some intervocalic *s was then
restored, as in the sigmatic aorist, by analogy with those forms in which the
*s was retained.

>It is fairly systematic, but it does not always occur.  Does anyone know of
>any rule akin to Werner's Law that would explain it's occurence.

You asked about *initial* *s which as far as I recall always > h in Greek; what
forms do you have in mind where *s is retained?

Um, and I think you mean Verner's Law--Verner is a Danish name, not German.

[elided]

>Consider these words:

You list Latin _sanguis_, Greek _haema_ [sic; _haima_ is the better transcrip-
tion], both meaning "blood", at cognates; they aren't, and therefore aren't
relevant to your question.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
