Re: Barba and Bestia: bH>b (dissimilation)

At 6:59:09 AM on Tuesday, August 4, 2009, caotope wrote:

>> Bestia is borrowed from *beRsYtYab < *beRtYsYaB and
>> be:lua < *betYsYLaw < *betYsYRaB (with R = voiced uvular
>> fricative, B = bilabial r).

> What the heck is that stuff supposed to be? *R suggests
> something Afro-Asiatic, but "bilabial R"!? The bilabial
> trill is only found in about three languages of Amazonas
> and two of Congo.

Sean (stlatos) goes in for elaborate reconstructions via a
powerful but rather questionable methodology. *Very*
powerful: it's led him to the conclusion that 'All known
languages not currently classified as IE are actually from
one branch of IE: Indo-Iranian'.

<http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/62318>

> ("Y" would presumably be the newest breikthru in How to
> Transcribe Palatalization in a Nonstandard Fashion. ;)

It's not altogether unreasonable, since Cybalist practice
generally is to use upper-case to indicate superscript
letters, as in the PIE phonemes *dH, *bH, *gW, etc.; but so
far as I recall, Sean is the only one who does it.

Brian