Re: [tied] Re: Vrddhi in sigmatic aorist

I absolutely agree. It's neither possible nor desirable to explain _all_ Slavic word-initial *x's as Iranianisms, and most cases of *xr- must be variants of *skr- (whether "expressive" or due to a not-completely-successful sound change (resembling the things that happened to *sk- in Germanic). I only singled out *xromU for special treatment because it's hard to resist the spectacular comparison with Skt. sra:ma and Germanic lam-. Wouldn't it be lovely if Slavic *xromU 'lame' and *lomiti 'break' proved to be ultimately related via *(s)lom-?

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: Sergejus Tarasovas

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 9:29 AM

Subject: [tied] Re: Vrddhi in sigmatic aorist

I see your point, but one can't explain all the instances of Slavic *x- in anlaut via Iranian influence, and I'm aware of at least 5 correspondences between Slavic and mostly Baltic that match the pattern Slavic *xr- ~ Baltic skr- (word-initially). One can explain all of them as expressive/onomatopoeic (even *xrIbItU 'backbone'), but *skr- > *xr- is not impossible phoneticcaly, because there's a number of rather convincing examples of Slavic *x- < *sk- in anlaut. I'm still looking for examples of Slavic *-xr- in inlaut (as to *-xn- , here, as you hinted, we have examples like *sUxno,ti 'get dry').