Re: Greek Prothetic Vowel as Reflex of PIE Laryngeal

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
>
> > The Greek prothetic vowel is not a regular reflex of a PIE laryngeal,
> > cf. *h1ed- > odont- "tooth". Besides, loanwords do strange things.
>
> The colouring of the prothetic vowel by an adjacent vowel rather than
> the by *h1 is one of these 'irregular rules' that bedevil comparative
> linguistics.

There's more to it than that. Any short vowel can assimilate to a
neighboring short vowel in Greek. The dialects often have different
forms; sometimes a V is changed to the same as a former "laryngeal".