Re: [tied] Scythians, Zoroastrians, etc.

--- Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

> I'd say that it is most unlikely. Greek <z> could
> certainly be used for a _voiced_ fricative or
> affricate, but I've never seen it used for [s^],
> [s'], [ts'], etc. Depending on whether the sound in
> question was a fricative (as in Skt.) or an archaic
> affricate in hypothetical Pontic Indo-Aryan, I'd
> expect the "red" word to be Hellenised as *<sauna->
> or (possibly) *<tiauna-> (cf. Te�spe:s for OPer.
> Cis^p(a:)is^), or something similar, but certainly
> not <zona->. I forgot to tell you that the Skt. <o>
> of <s'on.a-> comes from earlier *au (< PIE *eu), and
> that the monophthongisation of this *au was
> "sub-historical", characterising the Indian variety
> rather than Indo-Aryan in general. Mitanni IA
> retained the Proto-Indo-Aryan diphthongs (e.g. in
> <aika-> 'one' vs. Skt. <eka->), and they should
> probably be assumed for Pontic IA as well.
>
> Piotr

*****GK: "Alizones" is certainly not easy to "crack".
If direct affinities to Indic seem difficult because
of the considerations enumerated above, then perhaps
other solutions might be entertained. In any case,
"unlikely" or "highly unlikely" is not the same as
"impossible" or "absolutely impossible". I have some
doubts about the Iranic solution because it seems to
stretch the "lambdacizing" explanation a bit too much
(now on the first "r" instead of the second as in
"parala-") and very early too. And the "Aryan people"
lambdacized is out of the power loop of political
Scythia altogether.=== Still, the main players (and
candidates) here would be Iranic, Pontic Aryan, and
Thrakoid. I noticed that Duridanov's Thracian plays
around a little with its "z" and "s" (e.g. EZVAS for
Indic AS'VAH; ZURA for SIRA ('current') PIZAS for the
's' in Greek and Lithuanian 'bog, meadow' etc..== So
in spite of your explanations I can't quite rule out
some Thrakoid expression having changed the "s'" to a
"z" which then gave us the Greek. The diphtong issue
would not be a major problem. Lots of examples of
variety in Duridanov. Well, nothing certain here I
guess.*****

>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: george knysh
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 3:00 PM
> Subject: Re: [tied] Scythians, Zoroastrians, etc.
>
>
> --- Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> > If you got "red" from searching the Cologne
> > dictionary for "zona" (coming up with <zoNa>
> 'red'),
> > forget it. The dictionary uses the Harvard-Kyoto
> > spelling convention, whereby various ASCII
> > characters are arbitrarily assigned to "exotic"
> > letters to enable the exact transcription of
> > Sanskrit in ASCII terms. <zoNa> stands for
> <s'on.a>,
> > with a voiceless palatal initial, unlikely to be
> > represented as Greek <z>.
> >
> > Piotr
>
> *****GK: How would you expect this to appear in
> Herodotus? Can you say that a rendition via a "z" is
> impossible?*******
>
>

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Sports - Coverage of the 2002 Olympic Games
http://sports.yahoo.com