Re: [tied] Re: Earth and Thorn

Mate Kapovic wrote:

> I think nobody mentioned the fact that Lith. z^eme. and OCS zemlja can
> easily be interpreted as *dhg'hem- with the simplification of the initial
> *dhg'h- to *g'h-. This is in accord with Hittite tekan. If we started with
> *g'hdhem- for BSl., it would be difficult to explain why *g'hdh- > *g'h-.

My opinion is that in Balto-Slavic the "Core IE" (IE minus Anatolian and
Tocharian) palatal + "thorn" clusters simply merged with the reflexes of
the palatals (_and_ palatal + *s sequences); that's what we can see in
Slavic *tes- < *tek^T- (< *tetk^-?). This means that z^em-/zem- goes
back to *d(H)g^Hem- _via_ *gH^Dem-.

Piotr