--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "etherman23" <etherman23@...>
wrote:
> It looks like PIE *y in Greek becomes z, i, or 0 (at least word
> initially). Is there a consensus on the rules for this? It appears
> that before a vowel it becomes z and before a consonant it becomes
i.
> But under what conditions does it disappear?
The Greek correspondence of word initial y- of other IE languages is
h- or z-. The IE sources are plain *y- and the three clusters *H1y-,
*H2y-, *H3y- whose distribution is not quite clear. Martin Peters
has shown that hí:e:mi reflects *H1y- as /h-/, and the pronominal
status of the relative hós indicates IE plain *yó-s. That leaves two
candidates for z-. It will certainly be expected then that the
voiced laryngeal of *H3y- causes the cluser to yield z-, but it is
an open question whether *H2y- yields /h-/ because *H2 is voiceless,
or /z-/ because *H2 is also a somewhat strong sound.
That lands us at:
*y- > h-
*H1y- > h-
*H2y- > ? (h- or z-)
*H3y- > z-.
Jens