Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian

structural point of view, the shape of the horse name in centum dialects was
transformed to a much greater extent than in the satPm ones. The latter seem to be
innovative on a superficial phonetic level in changing old palatals, but they kept the
general phonemic scheme of the word without significant changes.
IX. Western Indo-European (“Old European”). Italic and Celtic. Latin equus < equos
“horse” (masculine) corresponds to a derivative equa “mare” (feminine) which
becomes a counterpart of masculine caballus in late Latin and survives in Romance:
Spanish yegua, Portuguese égoa, Catalan egua, Provençal ega, Old French ive,
Sardinian ebba, Rumanian iapÅ (cf. the survival of the “marked” feminine form also in
Lithuanian, Ormuri and some other Iranian dialects). The feminine stem in long -â
(originally a final laryngeal added to a thematic masculine stem) is equivalent to the one
found in Indo-Iranian and Baltic and can be traced back to the late Proto-Indo-European
dialectal period of the formation of the three-gender system after Anatolian (Hittite and
Luwian-Lycian) had separated from Indo-European (or “Indo-Hittite”). Some rites, the
name of which includes Latin equus like Octôber Equus, also go back to the period of
the dialectal connections of Italic and Indo-Iranian. 269 Latin q [k w ] was a single phoneme
into which, in intervocalic position 270 , merged the three segments described above. It
may be supposed that the development *´kw > *kw > *k w was a common phonemic
process at least in some Western Indo-European (“Old European”) dialects such as
Proto-Germanic (where later *k w > h w ) and Italic.
The Venetic language has a name for horse which closely resembles the proto-Italic
form: Accusative Singular ekvon/Latin equum < *equom. 271
The monophonemic treatment typical of the Western Indo-European development
of *´kw is particularly clear in Celtic: Gaulish archaic (in the name of a month) equos
(Nominative = the early Latin form), equi (Genitive), Later Gaulish epo- “horse” (in
proper names), Epona (the name of a goddess), proper name Epot-so-ro-vidus; Breton
268 See Polivanov 1968, 64, 120-125, 327-328 (on the name for horse: 123, 331); 1928, 163-164.
269 Dumézil 1966.
270 On initial position, cf. Ivanov 1958.