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wĺ̥kʷos

The word *wĺ̥kʷos is a thematic accented zero-grade noun perhaps derived from the adjective *wl̥kʷós ‘dangerous’ (compare Hittite walkuwa ‘dangerous’, Old Irish olc ‘evil’, Sanskrit [script?] (avṛká) ‘safe’, literally, ‘not wild’, वृकतात् (vṛká-tāt) ‘savagery’).1 Stress shift onto the zero-grade is consistent with nominalized adjectives: compare Sanskrit कृष्ण (kṛ́ṣṇa) ‘black antelope’ from कृष्ण (kṛṣṇá) ‘black’. Alternatively, the word may be a derivative of the verbal root *welh₂- ‘to tear up’.2 In either case, the word's formation closely resembles that of *h₂ŕ̥tḱos (“bear”), another thematic accented zero-grade noun whose referent is an animal subject to cultural taboos.3

The Latin and Greek reflexes are unexpected (vs. expected Lat **volquus, Gk **álpos; l̥ → Lat ol, Gk al). The Latin reflex may be variously a borrowing from Sabine (where PIE */kʷ/ regularly gave /p/), influenced by volpēs ‘fox’, or a taboo deformation meant to offset the fear usually associated with the animal, or any combination of the three. A deformation would explain the metathesis of */w/ and */l/, which also occurred in Greek (*wĺ̥kʷos → *lúkʷos → *lýkos), but does not explain the presence of delabialized /k/ which is regular in Greek only before /u/. In both cases, the expected forms are so close to the word for ‘fox’ (compare Lat volpēs, Gk alōpós, alṓpēx) that avoiding conflation of the two words ‘wolf’ and ‘fox’ may have motivated either alteration or borrowing.

The Germanic reflex, with /f/ ← */p/ ← */kʷ/, underwent an unusual sound change, but the velar was retained in at least one form, e.g., Old Norse ylgr ‘she-wolf’ (vs. Old English wylf, Middle High German wülpe ← *wulbī) ← *wulgʷī́ ← *wl̥kʷíh₂, which indicates neither taboo deformation nor derivation from some other root took place.

Armenian and Celtic have replaced the word with Proto-Indo-European *wai-lo (“howler”) due to taboo; compare Old Armenian գայլ (gayl), Old Irish fáel.4

Here is another similar derivation:

eleven

From Middle English, from Old English endleofan; from Proto-Germanic *ainalif (“one left”), a compound of *ainaz and *lif-. Compare West Frisian alve, Dutch elf, German elf, Danish elleve.

eleven

c.1200, elleovene, from Old English endleofan, literally "one left" (over ten), from Proto-Germanic *ainlif- (cf. Old Saxon elleban, Old Frisian andlova, Dutch elf, Old High German einlif, German elf, Old Norse ellifu, Gothic ainlif), a compound of *ain "one" (see one) + PIE *leikw- "leave, remain" (cf. Greek leipein "to leave behind;" see relinquish).

twelve

Old English twelf, literally "two left" (over ten), from Proto-Germanic *twa-lif-, a compound of the root of two + *lif-, root of the verb leave (see eleven). Cf. Old Saxon twelif, Old Norse tolf, Old Frisian twelef, Middle Dutch twalef, Dutch twaalf, Old High German zwelif, German zwölf, Gothic twalif. Outside Germanic, an analogous formation is Lithuanian dvylika, with second element -lika "left over."

I searched and found a hypothesis about these changes as following: Wolves, wolps, and lupes

"*kʷ > *p /R_. Where R = i,l (and likely then also u,r)."

"So I'm presuming the similar environment in question would be in cases like *-Rkʷ- (*R = {any resonant})? Then I suppose, PIE *pénkʷe > Germanic *fimf would fit that pattern as well."

Is the sound change PIE *kʷ to PGmc. *f or PIE *kʷ to PIE *p regular though it's uncommon? And does any other example exist?

PS: Here is a book about the similar sound change in Modern English.

Sir Cornflakes
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archenoo
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  • You should also add Russian "lisa" "fox" and "volk" "wolf" – Anixx Oct 09 '13 at 10:42
  • Btw the word for "five" is not such a good example in my opinion because there is too much assimilation involved in diverse languages. –  Oct 09 '13 at 12:18
  • User2498 is correct. Five in Germanic is a corruption (like penta- and finger) from Greek από ανοιχτή του χεριού (apó anoichtí tou cherioú) meaning ‘from an open hand’ and refers to 5 as fingers. – Ajagar Aug 14 '19 at 22:09

3 Answers3

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Actually, alternation and sound changes between *p and *kʷ are common in IE languages.

Compare

  • Latin aqua and Oscan āpa (water)

  • Latin vesper and Russian vecher < *kʷ (evening)

  • Cornish pemp and Latin quinque (five)

In this light you should consider the fact that they reconstruct two very close roots for PIE: lupos "fox" and u̯lq̆os "wolf". If we consider the p a result of alternation, we come to luq̆os vs u̯lq̆os which could be result of elementary metathesis.

Anixx
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  • Also note the p-celtic branch of the insular celtic languages that after loss of intial /p/ developed a new /p/ from */kʷ/. –  Oct 09 '13 at 12:17
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    @Anixx: yes, but they are common in the development of particular languages (Oscan, p-Celtic, Greek, Romanian). In other cases they require explanation, and that's what archenoo is asking about. – Colin Fine Nov 01 '13 at 00:43
  • Colin, they are not sound changes. That is scientific twaddle. They are interchangeable sounds having synonymous meanings and thus resulting in different spellings in different languages which eventually had sound changes in later stadia. – Ajagar Aug 14 '19 at 21:40
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As Anixx said, a shift from /kʷ/ or /kw/ to /p/ isn't at all unprecedented. To add a few more examples:

  • The "P-Celtic" languages: Welsh pen ~ Irish ceann < */kʷenn/ "head"
  • The "P-Italic" languages: Sabellic lupus ~ Latin *lucus < **luqvus "wolf" (*)
  • Some dialects of Ancient Greek: Attic hippos ~ Latin ecus < eqvus "horse"
  • Romanian: Romanian patru ~ Vulgar Latin *qvattro < qvattuor "four"

(*) This example is especially famous because the Oscan word ended up displacing the native Latin one—hence Spanish lobo, Italian lupo, etc.

So while this wasn't a regular development from PIE to Proto-Germanic, it's easy to imagine it happening in some scattered Germanic dialects.

It's pure coincidence, then, that the form of *wulfaz that caught on throughout Germanic was the one with /p/—like how Latin coincidentally ended up with labial lupus next to velar ecus. The only difference is that, in Italic, we have records of the Sabellic languages that show where the develarizing influence came from. In Germanic, no such records exist, so all we can do is speculate.

Draconis
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  • It is no coincidence. The /p/ can be identified in many words that have to do with the mouth eating: by sound changes fressen füttern as in food and feed. Also in combination with /s/ in other mouth functions: ‘sprechen’, Speise’, spittle’, speech’, Sprache, ‘spell’. No coincidences. – Ajagar Aug 14 '19 at 21:53
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My research into prehistoric comparative etymologies allows a different approach.

May I propose that ‘fox’, ‘bocca’ (mouth) and ‘voice’ use a similar root in the context of the mouth related to the /p/ and /f/ (the opening itself) and that the /Kw/ root is found in the same context of the mouth found in words like ‘chew’, ‘kauw’, ‘cook’, ‘cake’, ‘canine’ with a sound change /k/ to /j/ in ‘jaw’.

What is interpreted as a sound change here might actually be different compounds using either the ‘kw’ root or the ‘p/f’ root (originally words for the opening of the mouth and the chewing/jaw/teeth/biting function. Hence the differences in the use of /Kw/ and /p/ or /f/.

‘Wlkw’ variants could be compounds of a simple Prehistoric phrase saying ‘The mouth it bites’. W=The mouth L=He/It Kw=Teeth/Jaw/To bite

Wolf W=The mouth L=He/It F=Voice (howls)

Fox Fo=The mouth X=/Kwos=teeth/bites/jaws

Voice/Beak/Bocca The opening with the teeth (through which the voice is heard)

The list from the earlier answer above: “The "P-Celtic" languages: Welsh pen ~ Irish ceann < */kʷenn/ "head" The "P-Italic" languages: Sabellic lupus ~ Latin *lucus < **luqvus "wolf" (*) Some dialects of Ancient Greek: Attic hippos ~ Latin ecus < eqvus "horse" Romanian: Romanian patru ~ Vulgar Latin *qvattro < qvattuor "four"”

It shows mouth and head related words. Horse is cavallo/cheval and is cognate to words that mean ‘head’ too. ‘Four’ is really interesting because it shows the compound fir the 4 ‘heads of the earth’ ‘pa-try’: ‘pa’ (head/mouth) and ‘try’ (terra/earth). Qvattuor has qva (the jaws/teeth) and tuor (terra/earth). In Ancient religion we can see this symbolism in the Hindu god Brahma who has four heads and from whom they believe humanity came from just like Adam (Adam is made of clay and means earth. These are identical ideas.

There is overlap in contexts: Terra (earth) Tree (plant in the earth) Tier (German: animal on the earth) Tor (German: opening/goal) Tür (German: door) We see the opening context from the mouth/head in the earth. The connection with ‘head’ is dimentional. North (pole star), east and west (sunrise and sunset) and South (opposite north and an invisible pole from the northern Hemisphere.

We have ‘voice’ and ‘face’. Actually they both have both /f/ and /Kw/. This shows that the voice and face were described with determinatives as ‘the opening for chewing’. The voice is the sound that comes from the opening for chewing and the face is the side of the head where the opening fir chewing is situated.

Ajagar
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    What model of PIE are you using that has /f/? – Draconis Aug 13 '19 at 21:43
  • I refer to the Germanic reflex reference in the question. – Ajagar Aug 13 '19 at 21:55
  • The invertedPrehistoric description of beak and face (the opening teeth) is cognate to ‘kop’, a Dutch word meaning ‘beak/head’. German ‘Kopf’ has both /p/ and /f/. – Ajagar Aug 13 '19 at 21:57
  • (I'm asking specifically about "related to the PIE /p/ and /f/" in your second paragraph.) – Draconis Aug 13 '19 at 22:01
  • Ok, my mistake. I removed PIE. It is about the roots. – Ajagar Aug 13 '19 at 22:10
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    This is unscientific twaddle. -1 – Colin Fine Aug 13 '19 at 22:21
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    My problem with this answer is that it doesn't seem to involve any testable, falsifiable hypotheses. The idea that individual phonemes affect meaning isn't necessarily an unscientific one—but all the explanations here seem ad-hoc. The comparative method produces hypotheses that can be tested against the evidence and falsified; this post doesn't seem to. – Draconis Aug 14 '19 at 00:42
  • That is because if you have written evidence, hypotheses can be based on that historical evidence and the science is called etymology. If you want to look beyond that, the current system is also based on assumptions. The bulk of languages together shows a remarkable high number of similarities if you apply a couple of simple rules. Comparing and etymology should be compatible to produce better results. – Ajagar Aug 14 '19 at 04:32
  • By analyses of the sounds in these similarities and the use in older words meanings appear within a context that can be understood as metaphores in other contexts. By this you can sometimes determine which word is older by looking at fir example the inventions of man. A simple example: ‘mother’ (Dutch moeder/German Mutter). It seems the word is a compound of prehistoric versions of ‘ma-‘ (the word ‘ma’ still means ‘mum’ in Dutch) and ‘utherus’. The letter ‘m’ in Hebrew means ‘from’ and we can assume that one of the earliest meanings for the ‘m’ sound is ‘origin’. – Ajagar Aug 14 '19 at 04:44
  • Utherus is cognate to terra (earth) which shows the fertile aspect of a mother. – Ajagar Aug 14 '19 at 04:44
  • Continuing with fragmenting Uterus into smaller meaningful elements shows: – Ajagar Aug 14 '19 at 20:52
  • U-t(h)-r-us U: human/sky T(h): soil/ground R: rise/sun/gold -us: Greek suffix

    U: Human>hu-man has root meanings breathing or it could mean ‘upright’ in a similar context like breathing (the sky) and hand/man. We humans call ourselves after our hand function. Like we call hunting companion hounds. In earlier posts on this website I habe extensively explained the decompounding of the word ‘terra’.

     – Ajagar Aug 14 '19 at 21:02
  • Th for soil (check Chinese) has Hebrew Tell (mountain) decompounded to ‘soil-risen’ ‘Th-L’. In Dutch ‘tel’ means ‘count’ an upward direction in numbers. Different context, same principle. Dutch Tol (check context), Dutch ‘til’ (lift). Possible related sound changes /t/ >/c/ in : French ciel and Latin ‘caelum’ meaning sky. Looking at contexts we have: – Ajagar Aug 14 '19 at 21:08
  • Latin languages: sky; Germanic languages: counting; Hebrew: geology (mountains); Chinese ‘earth’. The contexts are consistent in having to do with upward directions. I could make a long list of all the languages but there is a dissimilation from the context sky into life too. This is also consistent even with bodyparts. I am saving the evidence for my book. Twaddle? That is what they said when Columbus said to sail west. I consider it pioneering and expect people to react like that and dismiss original ideas. It takes courage to do this and risk reputation. – Ajagar Aug 14 '19 at 21:15
  • Can anyone disproof the mouth-jaw hypothesis with arguments or evidence? – Ajagar Aug 14 '19 at 21:18
  • Or did prehistoric short sounds have meaning and were compounded to more suffisticated words with multiple meanings in different contexts? That would mean sometimes one sound/letter could change one context but contain the other similarities in its description. – Ajagar Aug 14 '19 at 21:21
  • /kr/, /gr/, /chr/ and /cr/ examples which contain the rudimentary meaning of ‘hand’ as in Greek cheri and many words like ‘creation’, ‘grab’, ‘grave’, ‘grip’, ‘crime’. Greek cheri is a compound of Kaf-Re (rudimentary meaning hand-rise (Semitic) or ‘hand-count’ if referring to the fingers and their function. – Ajagar Aug 14 '19 at 21:28
  • If we compare this to the Hebrew word for hand which is jd (bjd meaning ‘by the hand’ we see many words using the same roots in other languages: to bid, bidden, bieden, bode. Words all related to hands. Bieden (offer) and buy are cognate to Hebrew bjd (by the hand) like to give and kaufen (buy) is cognate to Arabic Kaf (hand). – Ajagar Aug 14 '19 at 21:33
  • @Ajagar Look up Saussure's "arbitrariness of the sign". If you think there's a single phoneme that corresponds to "hands", then can you explain Lat man-, AGrk cheír, Lingála -kanza, Russian ruká, English "hand", Japanese te? There's no sound that's shared between all of them. Which seems to contradict the claim that there's a universal "hand" phoneme. – Draconis Aug 14 '19 at 22:16
  • Again, the idea that humans have some sort of intrinsic sound-meaning mapping from birth isn't an unscientific one—there are plenty of variations on Universal Grammar floating around. But a scientific theory needs to make falsifiable predictions; that's the core of modern science. If you want to postulate that there's some phoneme that intrinsically links to "hands", or "earth", or whatever, awesome! Go for it! But what hypotheses come from that? Shouldn't all words for "hands" then contain your one specific phoneme? And just from a small sampling of languages, that seems to be falsified. – Draconis Aug 14 '19 at 22:19
  • “Shouldn't all words for "hands" then contain your one specific phoneme?” That is definately not the case because our hands can be described in different ways. Take the word ‘jd’ in Hebrew. It is based on the 10th letter in the Hebrew alphabet or vice versa. The number of our fingers. Inverted into French ‘dix’. By function ‘hand’ comes from ‘hunt’. Greek cheri refers to the creative function (rudimentary ‘palm-risen k-r or what we would say ‘handmade). – Ajagar Aug 14 '19 at 22:42
  • French mains is cognate to German Mensch (man/human) but also to Greek μου Ανοίγω (open to me, literally ‘my open’) which refers to hands. This is the reason why Mund and Mensch have ‘mn’ as initial consonants. – Ajagar Aug 14 '19 at 22:42
  • @Ajagar Okay; then give me one example of a sound that you say has a specific meaning. – Draconis Aug 14 '19 at 22:45
  • (I've put a question here to gather more evidence, if you're interested.) – Draconis Aug 14 '19 at 23:35
  • Please move the discussion to chat if you wish to continue it in order to avoid creating long comment threads here because it creates unnecessary clutter in this question. – Alenanno Aug 16 '19 at 21:05