From: tgpedersen
Message: 60522
Date: 2008-09-30
>Which all strengthens my suspicion of a substrate in Celtic.
> 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'.