Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian

No trace of a feminine stem in *-â formed from this word is found in Tocharian.
Among the archaic formations derived from the name for horse one may single out the
Tocharian B adjective yäkweññe “relating to a horse”, cognate to those archaic *-n-
formations that are represented in most ancient languages 263 : Old Indian A≈vin- (name
of divine twins also represented as two horses), Old Prussian aswinan, Lithuanian
aÍvíenis, river name AÍvìen& (see above on this type of suffix). Morphological and
semantic isoglosses show that after the separation of Proto-Anatolian-Hittite and Proto-
Anatolian-Luwian-Lycian the remaining Indo-European dialects were still developing
together before the centum-satPm division was created. This means that to the speakers
of these dialects the difference between a palatal stop and a corresponding velar sound
did not yet prevent the identification of stems which included these phonemes.
VIII. (North) Western Indo-European (“Old European”). Germanic: Runic “Proto-
Norse” ehwu = Dative *ehw-ê “to the Horse” (in inscriptions on the magical amulets
often bearing horse images as well) 264 ; Old Icelandic jôr “horse”, Gothic compound
aihva-tundi “bramble, pricky bush” 265 , Old English eoh “horse; name of a rune” (the
latter meaning corresponds to Old Danish eor, Gothic eyz 266 ) < *éhwaz (old barytone
type 267 ), Old Saxon compound ehu-scalc “horse-servant”. The feminine stem in -â is not
attested.
Gothic Y = [hw] is one letter which is considered to render one phoneme. It seems
that all three types of segments enumerated above (*´kw, *kw, *k w ) developed into a
single labialized fricative phoneme designated by this letter. Labiovelars in general are
unstable 268 , thus after becoming a labiovelar the segment usually develops into a non-
labialized phoneme or a labial losing one of its integral parts. Because of this, from a
263 Van Windekens 1975, 64. See above on a comparison to the Hurrian article and on the Baltic stem in -
n- and its cognates.
264 With a mixture of the runes e and u: Krause 1993, 58, §38; for an older interpretation, see Marstrander
1929, 74-77 (this view is not widely accepted).
265 Use in the names of plants similar to Greek: Lehmann 1986, 15, A 67; Chantraine 1990, 467.
266 On different attempts to understand this distorted name (for horse?), see Lehmann, ib., 100, E5.
267 Lubotsky 1988, 93, 162.