--- In cybalist@..., "michael_donne" <michael_donne@...> wrote:
> No one has any comments about this?
>
> I thought Fortunatov was unimpeachable.
Though I remember reading his name somewhere or other,
I don't really know anything about Fortunatov or his law
(though remember I'm an amateur, so this doesn't mean
much), but if he tried to derive any but a very few of the
retroflexes from l + dental, then he was definitely wrong.
Short of a long list of correspondences, I'm not sure how
to prove this to your satisfaction. I don't have a Sanskrit
dictionary, though my grammars do have some vocabulary in
them, but making such a long list would be tiresome anyway.
However, if you would like to compile a long list of Vedic
words containing retroflexes, and post it, then I will try
(hopefully with help from others on the list) to provide
as many correspondences as possible to demonstrate the actual
sources of retroflexes. I've also been working on a chart
showing the stages in the evolution of the retroflexes
from Proto-Indo-European sounds , but it's gotten a little
more involved than I originally intended, and I'm not sure
of the exact order of some of the sound changes that I want
to show, so give me a little while and I will post it when I
can pull it together.
David