Grzegorz challenges:
> Why H2 here? And not H3? Cf. Latin os, costa,
> Greek osteon, all with -o-.
It's true that Hittite only shows /h/ in /hastai/
which can be technically from either *h2 or *h3.
However, the observed alternation between *q (trad.
*k) and *h2 makes the most sense when one accepts
that these two phonemes belong to the same "marked"
class. Whether we want to call it "uvular",
"pharyngeal", "velarized", etc. is another matter.
> I'd rather see proto-IE *qW, *qu or *qo here which
> yielded *ko ~ *H3o in PIE.
I don't care what you'd "rather see" if it's not
supported by facts. IE **qW first needs to be proven.
It's not... so get to work, man! :)
> *H2 can be in 'goat' instead: see Greek aig- (but
> here -i- is unetymological).
Fine, but if *h2 is in both, we then have a clear
pattern of dialectal alternation, namely *q/*h2, in
a few examples like *h2ost-/*qost- "bone" and
*h2aig-/*qag- "goat". That has greater explanatory
power than your position.
= gLeN
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