>Then why does Brugmann bracket the r of *p&té:(r) and *k^uo:(n)? And
>why does Pokorny do the same?
That seems to me a classic case of the prioritising of Sanskrit over other
IE dialects. If Brugmann were alive today, would he have written that
form?
Sandhi variation in IE is at least plausible, even if I don't believe it,
but I doubt if anyone disputes the existence of the -r in the nominative in
IE, at least at a morphophonemic level.
So a reliance on Brugmann and Pokorny may be inappropriate here.
Peter