Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/wapsō

@Leasnam Most of these have -e-, so why was the page moved? Even Latin vespa has it. —CodeCat 01:22, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Since the PIE form is with -o-, the natural outcome would be -a-. -e- would come from contamination from *wapsijō...Should we move it back? It just seems easier to explain the -a- > -e- ; but not the converse Leasnam (talk) 01:29, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

There's more oddness going on though. Grimm's law excludes the combination "ps" since it would become "fs". I don't know of any other Germanic words with "ps" in them. —CodeCat 01:39, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

I have seen a reconstruction as *wabesō (i.e. *wabisō or *wabusō), where perhaps in some it collapsed later to form *wabsō first...I dunno, I generally defer to you for more insight into such matters :) Leasnam (talk) 01:51, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

@Rua, Leasnam: I would support this actually deriving from an irregular consonant stem *wafs ~ *wapsiz, along with a PWG derivative *wapsijā (because WG loves throwing *-jā on plant and animal names), which would account for the irregularities. Proto-Samic *viepsēs looks to be a borrowing from the genitive. --{{victar|talk}} 02:54, 11 September 2020 (UTC)