--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@...> wrote:
>
> In sum, we have together come to this provisional conclusion:
> Ancient Ligurian exhibited an albeit limited number of phonological
> innovations from PIE;
> */gwh/ > /b/ could be non-Celtic, but it's disputed;
>
To the best of my knowledge, this can't be Celtic nor anything else. Leaving aside the *outdated* reconstruction of series III stops as "voiced aspirated", we've got
gW >
b in some paleo-IE dialect(s), as in IE
*g^we:r- 'wild animal' > Germanic
*bi:ro:n 'bear' and related Altaic forms. The reduced form with
b- would possibly "reappear" in the 'brown' and 'beaver' (reduplicated) words.
If you remember from my previous posts, these "paleo-IE dialects" (a concept I adapted from Villar) represent the fragmentation of a "paleo-IE" language more or less equivalent to a Paleolithic PIE, intended as the "last common ancestor of all IE languages". The main difference between Villar and myself is while he investigated the ancient toponymy and hydronymy of Europe and SW Asia, I study the IE lexicon as well as the one of other families. As I said before, the "PIE" reconstructed by IE-ists is actually a
cross-section of the last stages of the IE family and not a real
protolanguage (although it would contain the Steppe paleo-dialect as a
subset).