Intensive Reduplication

[Vidhyanath Rao]

Patrick C. Ryan <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>> Forms such as Skt aayunak suggest initial laryngeal, but it must disappear
>> in yugam, Lat iugum . What vowel does this?

> Why not describe the form and the point you are making in greater detail?

The lengthening of the augment is usually attributed to laryngeal effects;
the most well known being in the reflexes of *eHs-
where the radical vowel must be lost in the weak cases.

In post-RV Sanskrit, lengthening of the augment is limited to the cases
where the rest of the verb begins with i/u/vocalic-r (so that the augmented
forms begins ai< *a:i, au <*a:u or a:r). This must be due to leveling of
laryngeal effects (from roots that began with *HVR- in PIE). But in RV,
there are some cases where the augment is a: even when the root in Sanskrit
begins with a liquid, such as a:yunak (<*eHyunegt/s) or a:nat. (<*eHnek't).
This, again, is generally attributed to laryngeals. In case of *Hyueg, there
is some support from Greek: Yoke (*Hyugom) is zugon (how should i
transliterate Greek into ASCII?). Initial *y does not become z in Greek.
Sihler is currently checked out of our library, but Rix makes  *Hy > z a
general rule for Greek.

A similar thing happens in case of *Hner. Greek has a prothetic vowel.
Sanskrit has only nar-/nr-, but in RV, the final vowel of a preceding word
is lengthened in some compounds (e.g., su:nara). Initial laryngeal is the
simplest explanation for this.

As for as I know, no initial PIE vowel or vocalic liquid disappears in
Indic.

> However, if you are suggesting that IE *yeu- should be recontructed as
> *Hyeu-, I believe that unlikely.

So how do you explain Greek zugon?

Regards
-Nath