De Decker Filip. Stang’s Law and the Indo-European word for cow

Indogermanische Forschungen. — 2011. — Vol. 116. — 42-59 p.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 _______ 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.*