15.1 Grassman's Law

Another famous sound change that happened in the history of Indo-European is called Grassmann’s Law.

Grassmann’s law describes a regular process of dissimilation that happened in Greek and Sanskrit.

If a Proto-Indo-European word had two aspirated stops the first dissimilated to an unaspirated stop (with the same point of articulation).

Greek trikhós ‘hair’ (genitive singular) derives from an earlier *thrikh-ós.

Grassmann’s Law applied to *thrikh-ós, resulting in dissimilation of the first aspirated stop to an unaspirated stop.

• Grassmann's law, answer to question

15.2 Links

A good etymological dictionary of English is Douglas Harper’s Online Etymological Dictionary.

The link to Eugene Cotter’s Roots of English: an etymological dictionary, referred to on p.375 of the textbook appears now to be defunct, and I have been unable to find this dictionary anywhere on the internet.

On the topics of pejoration and language taboos, see the TV interview with Keith Allan and Kate Burridge.