[B-Greek] Morphology of EXW > hECW

Stephen C. Carlson scarlson at mindspring.com
Wed Jan 26 11:45:42 EST 2005


"Perry L. Stepp" <plstepp at kcu.edu> wrote:
>How in the world does EXW (I have) pick up the rough breathing in the future
>tense?  Is hECW a different (but very similar) stem?

No, it's the same stem, but it is affected by Grassman's
Law, a sound change in Indo-European most evident
in Greek and Sanskrit.  Roughly, it states that the first
of two aspirated consonants in a word is deaspirated.

In your example, the actual root is hEX-.  In the present
tense, there are two aspirated conconants, so the first
gets deaspirated to EX-.  In the future tense, the -X-S-
becomes -C- and does not trigger the application of
Grassman's Law, so we still have the initial rough breathing.

Another example of this is the word for "hair."  In the
nominative it is QRIC, but in the genitive it becomes
TRIXOS.

Stephen Carlson

--
Stephen C. Carlson, 
mailto:scarlson at mindspring.com 
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words."  Shujing 2.35



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