Re: oldest places- and watername in Scandinavia

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 61538
Date: 2008-11-11

On 2008-11-11 19:40, tgpedersen wrote:

> > Does such a ghost haunt *waskanã 'wash' as well?
>
> Erh, what?

Another closed syllable (ruling out any Brugmannoid effects).

> > Are the Skt. /i/ in <ániti> and Gk. /e/ in <ánemos> ghosts of a
> > departed quantity?
>
> Actually, that's exactly what I think h1 denotes. No one knows what
> kind of phoneme it was, except that it causes compensatory
> lengthening. But so many consonants cause compensatory lengthening
> when they go. The cognates of *dheh1- in FU has a velar in auslaut,
> maybe that's the obe that cause it in OIE?

I have no idea what "a ghost of departed quantity" is, but there's at
least one thing we do know about *h1: it was a consonantal segment.
That's enough as far as my argument goes. The fine phonetic details are
irrelevant.

Piotr