Re: PIE homeland in northwest India?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "anthonyappleyard <MCLSSAA2@...>"
<MCLSSAA2@...> wrote:

> Anthony Appleyard wrote:-
>
> This book says that Natwar Jha has decipered the Indus valley

script

> and that it turned out to be Sanskrit written in a syllabary that
> largely ignored vowels. What support is there for this decipherment?
>
> If this is correct, then when the Indus Valley script started to be
> used, I suspect that its language was likely more like PIE than
> Sanskrit, and in early inscriptions linguists should look for forms
> with these features:-
> (1) Second palatalization not yet happened: e.g. *[kakara] instead

of

> [cakara] = "I have made".
> (2) First (satem) palatalization not yet happened.
> (3) Laryngeals represented by consonant signs.

In Witzel's Substrate Languages in Old Indo-Aryan I find that he
mentions k/s´ alternations in Para-Munda(?) loans in Vedic:

S´arkot.a / Karkot.a "snake demon"
karkat.a "crab"
Kambota / S´amban "name of demon"
kabara / s^abara
ki:sta / s^i:s.t.a "shell"
kirata / Cilata "a mountain tribe"
Kimidin / S^imida "demon" / "a demoness"
Kiknasa "ground grain" / cikkasa "barley meal"

where he assumes an original Para-Munda phoneme that became /k/
and /c/ in Vedic. But the easier assumption would be that Vedic had k

> c in that period and re-borrowed the roots, or?

Torsten