Re: IE *p and *b

On 2007-12-09 15:52, meska_jd wrote:

> *p has become w after *s- and then it was treated as any inhereted *sw-
> (Thurneysen actually says that *sp- and *sw- treatment is identical).
> Apparently all combinatorial changes of *p (like *pt > cht or *opn >
> oun ) happened before *p disappeared.

I know _that_, but what you said was there were "no native words with
*sp- in Irish", and then, "ph- is a result of *sw- lenition in Irish
..., not of *sp-". Neither statement is true if by *sp- you mean
_etymological_ *sp- (and if not, why use asterisks?). A more detailed
scenario would perhaps involve something like *sp- > *sP > *sB- > *sw-
in the prehistory of Irish.

Piotr