Re: S mobile (Was : PS Emphatics)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fournet.arnaud" <fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:

>
>
> What is "s mobile" ?
>
> A standard feature of orthodox PIE. Some roots appear both
> with and without initial *s, e.g., *(s)teg- 'to cover' (Gk.
> <stégo:>, Skt. <sthagati> 'to cover, conceal', Lat. <tego:>,
> OIr <tech> 'house', ON <þekja> 'to thatch', etc.).
>
> Brian
> =========
> Tsalam? t?ob
>
> How do you explain
> that the phoneme with no grammatical status
> can be there or not be there ?
>
> Which languages in the real world do that ?

Sanskrit perhaps. I know there are variants with and without s-mobile
in that language. There are Germanic variants as well, IIRC. Like *d-,
I propose that the s-mobile was a noun class prefix. It appears
frequently on verbs because of agreement with noun class.