Proto-Iranian had no *l, since PIE *l had
merged with *r there. In more recent times lateral *l arose here and there in
language-specific conditions: for example, Middle Persian pahlavi: <
*parþava- < *parcava- 'Persian'; in Pashto there is a regular change of
*d > l (e.g. lu:r 'daughter' < *duxtr-, pla:r 'father' < *pidar- <
*pitar-). In "European" Iranian (including Ossetic), *r developed into *l when
palatalised before *i or *y. "Alan" is indeed a dialectal variant of *arya:na-.
Ossetic has regular liquid dissimilation (if there are two /r/'s in the same
word, the first of them changes to /l/). I suppose two clashing laterals would
have been dissimilated in the same way.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2001 1:33 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Scythian tribal names: Paralatai
*****GK: What is the rule or rules for the transformation of
"R" to "L" (or vice-versa) in Iranic languages? I suppose that "Alan" actually
means "Aryan"?*****