Re: [tied] What song did the IEs sing?

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 11:42:13 +0100, Piotr Gasiorowski
<gpiotr@...> wrote:

>My own proposal, published some time ago, was that the "long-diphthong
>roots" had the structure CeiH-, with monophthongisation assumed in some
>full-grade forms (to avoid superheavy syllable rhymes), e.g. *poih3-C- >
>*poh3C- (or perhaps even *peih3-C- > *peh3C- > *poh3C-, though this is
>something I invented a moment ago), *trei-h2 > *trih2, and *dHeih1-C- >
>*dHeh1C-. That's not very different from the generally accepted
>diphthong smoothing in *djeum > *dje:m, etc. Of course in the nil grade
>things like *pih3-tó- > pi:tá- and *dHih1-tó- > *dHi:tá- fall out
>naturally without any extra assumptions. This solution seems to work in
>many cases, but apparently not for <gi:tá->, since *g(W)iH-tó- would
>have given *ji:tá-.

g(W)&-tó- > gi(:)tá, with lengthening of the schwa (as e.g.
in -na:-verbs: gr.bh-n.á:-mi, pl. gr.bh-n.i:-mási), is a
possibility, although I'm not really sure what triggers the
lengthening. It's common enough in Skt., though.

Have you compared notes with Jens' theory about these
*VHi/*VH/*ViH/*Hi/*&-forms? I seem to recall a discussion a
long time ago, but I can't remember if anything was
resolved.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...