On Thu, 01 May 2003 02:52:13 +0000, "Daniel J. Milton"
<
dmilt1896@...> wrote:
> It's that 'gul' ---> 'varda'. I'm willing to believe it's a
>series of regular sound changes, but from my very limited resources
>on Persian, I have no no idea what they are, and was hoping someone
>could enlighten me. You can't say it's self-evident!
No, that it isn't. It seems to be correct, though.
/w-/ > /g(w)-/ is in itself rather commonplace. From Indo-European
only, we see it in Welsh (Brythonic) (e.g. gwynn "white" < *wind-),
Modern Spanish (e.g. whisk(e)y -> güisqui), Armenian (e.g. get "river"
< *wed-) and indeed Persian (e.g. MP gurpak, NP gurba "cat" < *wl.p-).
The development in Persian seems to be *w(V)- > gu-, with rounding of
the vowel, from all the examples I've seen, which only leaves -rd- >
-l- to be explained. This is I believe a regular development in
Persian, but I don't have the means to check that right now. In any
case, for a language that had lost all its /l/'s, such as
Proto-Iranian, reintroduction of /l/ by a development /r/+dental > /l/
isn't totally surprising.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...