From: Rick McCallister
Message: 58091
Date: 2008-04-26
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen"If proto-Iranian is *aiwas and not *aika, then why
> <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> > That's true. Strictly speaking we must either
> assume either
> >
> > 1) that the Proto-IIr word was *aika and assume
> that Iranian replaced
> > that with aiwa, or
>
> Actually the evidence (see, for example,
> http://www.zompist.com/numbers.shtml ) gives us
> Proto-IIr *aiwa- if we
> accept Nuristani as an independent branch, and the
> consensus is that
> the Proto-IIr form was *aiwa-.
>
> > 2) we must interject a common ancestor to
> Indo-Aryan and the Mitanni
> > glosses, in which the word was aika, as you point
> out
>
> Ahem! Try Proto-Indo-Aryan. FWIW, Dardic also
> appears to show *aika-.
>
> > Mostly for practical reasons, linguist have chose
> option 1), since it
> > seems like a lot of terminological trouble to
> define a new stage to
> > accommodate a few few words in Mitanni. It's true
> that that entails
> > elevating aika to the status of proto-IIr,
> although we have no way of
> > determining whether that's true, whether it was
> PIIr *aika or *aiwa.
>
> Richard.
>