Re: [tied] Which laryngeal in "father"?

glen gordon wrote:

> Chris Culver:

>>Now, I thought that the 'father' was *ph2ter.
>
>
> It is. (Actually, technically *ph2te:r in the
> nominative unless you meant the stem *ph2ter- with
> the hyphen at the end.)
>
> I'm no Tocharian expert but you always have to keep
> in mind the possibility of irregular changes with
> nursery words like these. Outside of Tocharian, *h2
> is well represented and *ph2ter can even be derived
> from the verb *peh2-, sensibly giving the word
> "father" an original meaning of "provider".

In fact, Toch.A pa:car and Toch.B pa:cer are regular reflexes of PToch.
*pa:ce:r < *p&2té:r. It's all regular in the nom.sg., though there's a
little analogical restructuring (of no relevance for the *h2 question)
in the other case-forms.

Piotr