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

Abstract

Abstract According to a phonetic rule commonly referred to as Eichner’s law, the quality of a long *ē was not affected by an adjacent laryngeal *h 2 or *h 3 in the prehistory of the individual Indo-European languages: Latin spērāre ‘hope’ < *spēh 2 -s- (desiderative), Old Slavic spěti ‘be successful’ < *spēh 2 - (cf. *sph 2 -ró- in Ved. sphirá- and Lat. prosperus; *speh 2 -i-s- in Old Slavic spěxŭ); Tocharian B yerpe < *h 3 ērb h -o- ‘disk, orb’ (without colouration) versus Latin orbis < *h 3 orb h -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: Latin īdūs < *h 2 ēid- ‘Ides’, a term originally referring to the full moon, for which a connection with aemidus < *h 2 eid- (a term glossed as tumidus) can plausibly be argued; Greek ἔγκατα < *h 2 ēnk- ‘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 to volume, not to weight). The striking structural parallelism between ἔγκατα < *h 2 ḗnk-r/n- ‘pluck’ (with Osthoff-shortening) and ἧπαρ < *(H)yḗk w -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.