--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@...>
wrote:
>
> Many of Kuhn's so-called *a-words have cognates in Sumerian that
> have <a>.
>
> Unless your proposing a Sumerian substrate in Europe, it is easier
> to assume that, with a word like *bhar-, the <a> is original
> (Sumerian par).
>
And the really, really easy way out is to assume the word is a loan in
both IE and Sumeria, so that the one I'm taking.
And BTW, I noticed an inordinate amount of IE roots in -a- among the
ones claimed to have cognates in Baltic Finnic, so I'll assume they
are loans in both language groups too.
That way, I can stick with a PPIE vowel inventory of three: i, a, u,
and don't have to, like Piotr, find a hole in that triangle to insert
an ancestor of PIE a.
Torsten