Stang's Law and the Indo-European word for "cow"

Abstract

The present article investigates the etymology of the Indo-European word for "cow" and looks at two types of reconstruction, with and without laryngeal: *gwous and *gweh3us (suggested by Kuryłowicz in 1927) or *gwh3eus (as already suggested by de Saussure in 1878). By assessing the instances where Stang's Law operated and failed to operate, we find that the correct reconstruction is *gwous. The accusative singular of the word "cow" in Doric and Homeric Greek, Sanskrit, Sabellic and the Greek hekatombe are additional evidence in favour of this reconstruction. The article also looks at two possible arguments against that reconstruction (the short vowel a in the oblique cases and the disyllabic scansion of the first syllable in Vedic poetry): an ablaut type *nokwts, *nekwts can account for the short a in the Indo-Iranian weak cases, and the absence of a disyllabic scansion in Avestan proves that the Vedic metre is the fruit of a poetic licence. Consequently, we see no reason why *gwous could not be kept.*