From: Urban Lindqvist
Message: 2079
Date: 2000-04-10
> I mean PIE (or Indo-Hittite, if you prefer) *e in unstressed
> positions. Roughly,
>
> ["internal reconstruction" PIE]**(h1)es-ónti > ["comparative" PIE]*
> (h1)@sónti > Hittite asantsi (I prefer to use -ts- spellings on
> the
> list, since lay people generally tend to assume that z = [z]).
>
> The initial weak vowel was dropped in most branches. I prefer this
> analysis to the assumption of a change like *h1 > a, because it
> accounts for many Hittite alternations that certainly don't involve
> *h1. As for the details, I can't lay them out in a short posting, so
> I'll prepare a longer account soon in order to share my pre-
> publication views on reduction vowels in PIE with CyBaList members.
>
> Piotr
>
>
>
> --- In cybalist@egroups.com, "Urban Lindqvist"
> <urban.lindqvist@...> wrote:
> > From: Piotr Gasiorowski
> >
> > [Piotr:] What is confusing about Hittite is that it also
> has "strong" e corresponding to "weak" a! This is because originally
> unstressed PIE *e could be reduced to a schwa-like vowel (*@) which
> became Hittite a. [...]
>
>
> > [Urban:] I don't follow. What kind of an *e do you have in mind? A
> Pre(-Greco-Aryan)-PIE/Indo-Hittite unstressed *e, or an analogical *e
> (*h1s-énti --> *(h1)es-énti > asanzi), or something else?
> > By the way, are there any convincing examples against the
> assumption *h1 > a /_[+dental] in Anatolian (or Hittite only)? This
> would take care of adanzi and asanzi, and the rest would be
> analogical.