[tied] Vedic Rta... one last time

--- Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

> A. wrote:

> > I know that the Snaskrit Rta, Sanskrit Ritu, and
> Avestan Asha all
> > ultimately derive from the PIE root *Ar- "to fit
> together" but what I
> > am unsure about are the intermediate stages
> between *Ar- and the
> > finished terms.
>
> The root is *h2ar- (//h2er//) 'fit, put together'.
> Old Indic r.tá-,
> r.tú- 'rule, order' and r.tí- 'art' contain the zero
> grade: *h2r.-tó-
> (deverbal adjective, or its substantivisation =
> 'cosmic order') and
> *h2r.-tú-, -tí- (deverbal nouns). The informal
> spelling <ri> for
> syllabic [r.] reflects its traditional Sanskrit
> pronunciation (but is
> not the correct transliteration). Avestan <s^.> is a
> development of *rt
> following an accent,

No, rt can become rs. no matter what the
environment; it's just optional. Later r > 0 before
s. or T and s. > s^

m@...^a-/m@...@ta- < mrto- and mas^ya- < mer-t-yo- but
m@...@Tyu- < mr-t-yu-

compare Sanskrit

mrta- and martya- and mrtyu-

Either t optionally became s (then regular rules)
after r or t > t. > s. after r. Either way this must
be an old variation since s and z from t and d don't
become s. and z. after u, i, etc.

-rista- < -lit-to- and uzda:na- < ud-dheH1-no-

> so both <ar&ta-> and <as^.a->
> (the latter used as
> the name of a divinity) correspond to Skt. r.ta-,
> with accent on the
> suffix in the former case and shifted to the root
> syllable in the latter.

No, in Avestan r. > ar before a consonant in the
same syllable or word-finally. Later r. > @r
syl-final and Vr > Vr@ at the end of a syllable so we
can see:

mrz.dika-

mrz.-di-ka mr-z.di-ka
marz.-di-ka
z^ z^
m@...^di-ka
m@-r@-z^di-ka

Both variants of "pity" (compare Sans. mr.d.i:ka-
"favor" with metathesis of z. giving long i).

There's plenty of evidence for this so as^a- must
come from metathesis of H2 (there are many such cases
with H in Sans. and Av.).






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