Re: [tied] Thracian place-names

From: George Hinge
Message: 37115
Date: 2005-04-12

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
wrote:

> The comparison of <arf> with "Arpoxais" is fanciful. It would
require
> the Ossetic metathesis of *-fr- > *-rf- (*afra- > arf) to date
back,
> impossibly, to Old Iranian times or to have happened in Scythian
> independently. But if so, why should we have an unmetathesised -pr-
in
> the hydronym?

It is not necessary to date the metathesis to Old Iranian. There may
have been a tendency towards metathesis in many different dialects of
the vast Scythian-Sarmatian dialect continuum. The sources of the
Scythian dialect of the 7th-3rd cent. BC are too few to exclude the
presence of the metathesis here. However, in the Iranian personal
names of the Greek inscriptions from the Northern Black Sea Coast
dating to the Roman age, there are numerous examples of metathesis,
e.g.:
- Phurtas (CIRB 101, 1278, 1282, 1283), Purthaios (IOSPE 1(2).43, 83,
99, 130, 176), Purthakes (IOSPE 1(2).86, 101, 102) = Ossetic fyrt,
furt "son", Avestic puþra-
- Sorchakos (CIRB 1282) = Ossetic syrx, surx "red", Avestic suxra-
- Pharnoxarthos (CIRB 1245, 1282, 1286) = Ossetic (æ)xsar "power,
strength", Avestic xšaþra-
Perhaps this isogloss was primarily "East Scythian" (around Don, =
Sarmatian), whereas "West Scythian" (around Dnepr) retained stop +
liquid. We have examples of metathesis in Olbian names, it is true,
but they are due to eastern influence then.

> Another possibility perhaps worth contemplating is
> dialectal Iranian "umlaut" applying across a consonant cluster,
e.g.
> *-afri- > "Sarmatian" *-aifr- --> Slavic *-e^prU. The i-stem *-afri-
as
> the compositional variant of *-afra- seems OK to me.

What is the evidence of Iranian "umlaut" (i-metathesis) in Scythian
and Ossetic?