Re: [tied] Exampaeus

*****GK: I realized that *ek^wo gave Thr. "esvas"
("ezvas") after posting by checking a Thracian word
list. But I also found Thr. "asn-" (from IE *eg'hom)
(I,me); and Thr "zan-" (from IE *g'en) (to give birth,
a kin) which seems to suggest that you can also get
Thr. "a" from IE "e". The "a"-"e" issue interested me
because I had noticed that some Thracian words could
be rendered by either (darsas or dersas 'courageous';
tarpas or terpas 'a gap, crack').BTW I also found one
instance where IE "a" became Thracian "e" (*kapro- =
ebros  'goat').*******
 

What if Thracian /e/ was (at least allophonically) realized as [open-mid E] (as in Baltic)? The Greeks, whose /e/ was a rather close-mid sound, could well hesitate between {a} and {e}-spellings. By the way, Standard Lithuanian ta'rpas 'gap' sounds like [tE'rpas] in some dialects.

 

Sergei