Re: [tied] Helios

On 2006-08-27 06:35, stlatos wrote:

> There's no reason to think that *L nasalized at the same time as the
> outcome of *s. I specifically mentioned Pashto nwar as an example of
> nasalization occurring at a different (post-PIr) time.
>
> Since there are no other final *ls how would you be able to tell it
> couldn't come from that and not *ns?

This is completely ad hoc, and implausible. There's no *a > GAv. &
before _secondary_ nasals. Of course you can insist that something like
*svans existed already in proto-Indo-Iranian, so the *n is sufficiently
old. I would agree with that, but my claim is that the *n is still older
-- in fact, PIE.

> As you probably know h>Nh is unlikely; why not s>x in various
> locations and x>xx between front V? xx or GG is more likely to become
> Nx > Nh than h itself. In Ossetian *s>*x then velar > uvular; *x is
> more likely to provide the forms seen there and in all Ir languages
> than PIr *h.

I see no reason to posit Iranian *x as the intermediate stage between *s
and /h/. A coronal sibilant may lose its oral component directly. I
can't see why -axa- > -aNXa- should be more likely than -aha- > -aNha-.
In some langauges there is a tendency towards the nasalisation of vowels
next to glottal or pharyngeal segments, known technically as
"rhinoglottophilia":

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/phoNet/message/393

Piotr