At 6:29:08 PM on Monday, September 29, 2008, Andrew Jarrette
wrote:
> This is slightly off-topic, but would anyone know what
> explains the <s-> in Brythonic words for "seven"?
You mean why it's retained instead of yielding the usual
<h-> in Welsh, Cornish, and Breton? All I know is that
there is just a handful of such exceptions, few enough that
Jackson doesn't try to account for them in LHEB. (That's
not counting borrowings from Latin, which he says usually
retain initial <s->.) The words for 'six', on the other
hand, have the expected reflexes of PIE *sw-.
For Rick: Gaul. <sextan->, according to Matasovic'.
Brian