Cowgill's law (Germanic)

Cowgill's law says that a PIE laryngeal /h₃/, and possibly /h₂/, turns into /k/ in Proto-Germanic when directly preceded by a sonorant and followed by /w/. This law is named after Indo-Europeanist Warren Cowgill.

This law is still controversial, although increasingly accepted. Donald Ringe (2006) accepts it; Andrew Sihler (1995) is noncommittal.

Examples are fairly few:

• Proto-Germanic *kwikwaz "alive" (whence English quick) < PIE *gʷih₃-wos (cf. Latin: vīvus)
• Proto-Germanic *unki acc. du. "us two" (cf. Gothic: unkis, Old English: unc, Old Norse: okkr) < PIE *n̥h₃we (cf. Greek: nṓ; Ved. āvā́m acc. du. "us two" < *āva-ám)
• Possibly Old English: tācor "husband's brother" < PIE *dayh₂wḗr (cf. Greek: dāḗr, Ved. devṛ́, Latin: lēvir)

The first two examples, however, have good alternative explanations which don't involve Cowgill's law:

• Proto-Germanic *kwikwaz < PIE *gʷi-gʷh₃-(w)ó-.
• Proto-Germanic *unki < PIE *n̥h₁ ge acc./dat. du. "us two at least" (other accusative personal pronouns may have been built the same way: Proto-Germanic *miki acc. sg. "me", *þiki acc. sg. "you (sg.)", and *inki acc./dat. du. "you two" ).

If the sound law becomes generally accepted, the relative chronology of this law could have consequences for a possible reconstructed phonetic value of /h₃/. Since Germanic /k/ results from earlier PIE /g/, and since the change occurred before Grimm's law applied (according to Ringe), the resulting change would be actually /h₃w/ > /gʷ/. This would have been more likely if /h₃/ was a voiced velar obstruent to begin with. If /h₃/ was a voiced labiovelar fricative as is occasionally suggested, the change would therefore have been: /ɣʷw/ > /ɡʷ/.