Re: [tied] Re: *wogwh-ni ‘ploughshare’

On 2007-05-04 20:51, stlatos wrote:

> How can you possibly be sure? The history of Alb isn't clear enough
> for you to see u in a certain environment that rounds o>u in a closely
> related language and be sure it shows PIE *u. If o>u between certain
> rounded sounds in Alb (the point I was trying to prove by examples
> such as Greek) it could have wu>u as well. Doesn't gjum require
> accent on the first syllable also? There doesn't seem to be any
> evidence for accented *supnós at all.

True. But *súp-no- (the substantivisation, with contrastive accent, of
hypothetical *sup-nó-) works directly for Greek, Albanian and Slavic
without positing any extra sound changes (operating independently in the
three branches?).

> The Toch forms just seem to show metathesis (*swep > *s.op > *s.pa
> just like *septm, > s.pät (and/or contamination w 'six'?)) in one word

Not simple metathesis but epenthesis plus loss of schwa in an initial
syllable.

> but not in another (*swepnyo+m > *swopniyo+m + to+ >> *sopniyto+ >
> *samnitya+).
>
> If you are advocating:
>
> swepnos
> sw&pnos
> sw&p&nos
> swp&nos
> sp&nos
>
> etc.
>
> I'd like to know why 0>& / p_n occurs in one word and not another (or
> whatever additional rules you propose).

The problem is that old *o can't give TB ä /&/, while swe- yields PToch.
*sw'&- reflected as in *swésor- > *s.w'&sër- > TB s.er, TA s.ar (with
loss of the schwa) or *swér-mn. > *s.w'&rm& > TB s.arm, TA s.urm ~ s.rum
(note the /s./ in TB s.pane, TZ s.päm.). TB sänme- therefore points to
*s&mnë- < *supno-, though I don't know enough about Tocharian sound
changes to be able to explain the absence of epenthesis in this case.
The process was a little capricious, it seems, cf. *weg^H-no- 'way' >
*w'&knë > TB yakne, TA wkäm.

Piotr