Reconstruction talk:Proto-Indo-European/(s)meld-

How did we get to a PIE reconstruction When we don't have an OE word attested? Are there any cognates to be sure of this word's origin? --Proto-Germanic Fan (talk) 07:12, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Given the meager set of descendants I am tempted to delete this outright, but there are descendants missing, one of which is Greek méldesthai according to Philippa's dictionary. Indo-European has a strange feature called s-mobile where the same root is attested in some words with an s- at the front and in some without. It's completely unpredictable which words in which Indo-European branches have the s- and which don't (except for Greek and Latin I think, which often lost initial s-). Sometimes the two forms of the root are even attested in the same language. For example, *steuraz and *þeuraz. For this root, both smel- and mel- are found in the Germanic languages side by side as well, and English itself has both varieties. —CodeCat 10:47, 30 July 2012 (UTC)