Re: Not "catching the wind " , or, what ARE we discussing?

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

>
> On 2008-04-15 23:30, stlatos wrote:
>
> > Why would you say *kYuwn,- > *s'un- instead of *s'uva-? And then in
> > Ir (of some kind) dim. *suvaka- >> sobaka.
>
> I was referring to hypothetical +k^un-bH-, not to +k^uwn.-bH-.

Why? I didn't propose that or ask about what that would become.

>Anyway,
> the word is <s'vabHis>, not +s'uvabHis

That's why I marked it with *.

, and what we actually find

> widespread in Iranian is *spaka- 'dog(-like)' (cf. Skt. s'vaka- 'wolf').

Maybe you don't understand what I'm proposing. If CuwVCV > CwVCV
and CwV# > CuwV# etc. in In-Ir there's no way to prove which form for
'dog' is older by In-Ir evidence itself. However, a borrowing from
before the rules operated could be seen in Russian.

Your description of what "we actually find" seems to regard a
borrowing in another language as less important in reconstructing the
ancestral form than non-borrowed descendants. Since I know you regard
other borrowings as showing features lost in the source language, what
if anything makes this case different?