Re: Fwd: Phonetic change lo-no in some languages

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> On 2008-03-21 17:58, Kishore patnaik wrote:
>
> > I am struggling to find an answer to this problem related to Santali
> > and many languages of India.
> >
> > lo = nine (Santali)
> > noe = nine (Bengali); no_~ = nine (Lahnd.a, Punjabi)
> >
> > I am told that l-n interchanges are recorded in Pushto and Assamese.
>
> But Assamese has <na> 'nine' (the Pashto word sounds almost the same)
> and I'm not aware of any Modern Indo-Aryan or Iranian language with an
> initial /l/ in this numeral. You evidently took this word from
> Kalyaranaman who'd found it God knows where (I can't check his
> reference), but the normal Santali word for 'nine' is <are>, an

expected

> reflex of the Proto-Munda numeral.

Looking at Mark Rosenfelder's list (
http://www.zompist.com/numbers.htm ), I see that Birhor has /la:/ for
nine. Several Munda languages use the Indic numerals from '5' to
'10', including Birhor. I suggest you consider the possibility of a
Birhor-specific change n > l (possibly conditional, judging by its
retention in _punia_ '4'). I can't find any other sources to verify
this form, so it is even conceivable that /la:/ is a typographical
error for /na:/!

Richard.