--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...> wrote:
> Piotr:
> >This is made more likely by the fact that a-colouring induced
> >by *k is not equally frequent in all branches, which suggests
> >that the merger of *k and *q was not yet complete when, e.g.,
> >Italic split off from its closest relatives.
>
> Am I misunderstanding or are you saying that the a-colouring
> is strictly post-IE. Or are we talking about different events of
> a-colouring?
It's probably the same process but with different chronological
layers. A-colouring by *h2 is so consistent in all branches that
dating it to PIE must be regarded as the most economic hypothesis.
A-colouring by the *k-series, on the other hand, is sporadic and shows
traces of post-PIE lexical diffusion, with different results in
different branches. Of course there are also people who don't believe
in the *k^/*k contrast in the first place (such was also my view until
discussions on this forum convinced me that there was irreducible
evidence for *k [q] as a separate phoneme).
Piotr