Re: Horses' Asses and the Indo-European Homeland

At 7:27:24 PM on Friday, September 26, 2008,
david_russell_watson wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> <BMScott@...> wrote:

>> Sure: PScand *e followed by *a or *u in the next syllable
>> became /ja/ and /jo/ (later /jö/) unless preceded by *w, *r,
>> *l or immediately followed by *h in the next syllable. Thus
>> we have ON <jafn> 'even' from *eBna and <jo,rð> 'earth' from
>> *erþu. A non-initial example is <sjo,t> 'abode, home'
>> ('seat') from *setu.

> Did these resulting /ja/ and /jo/ begin their existence
> as diphthongs, or were they from their start a sequence
> of phonemes two?

As diphthongs. Presumably the sequence for /ja/, for
instance, was something like /e/ > /éa/ > /eá/ > /ja/.

> Are there examples of a phoneme split closer to the one
> of our original question, in which something like /etHo/,
> phonetically [e.tHo], would become /etho/, phonetically
> [et.ho]?

I don't know. I've a feeling that somewhere I've run into
/V~/ > /Vn/ somewhere, but I can't recall where.

Brian