Indo-Aryan migration vs Indigenous origin - scholarly debate

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

"Dominique.Thillaud" <thillaud at UNICE.FR> wrote:

>"the "-au" ending comes about only in dvivacanam" ?
>No: nominative aSTau (RV, &c.) being a counter-example.
>
>        There was tentatives to explain aSTau by a dual, but without any
>good result. The simpler was to consider *qet(w)r- (4), to cut the last "r"
>(without understand it!), to suppose a zero degree with "qt" > "kt" and to
>prefix by a dubious particle "O" (near) suggested by few Greek words and
>Skr. A-gam- (shortened before two consonants?); finally: "two 4s brought
>nearer"!!

Leaving lurk-mode...  What's wrong with the much simpler one: Avestan
<aSti-> "width of four fingers" (IE *ok^t-is, *ok^t-os "4" => du.
*ok^toH "8")?

>        In fact, it seems we have a "vanishing" "w" at the end of the
>Eurindian root, suggested by the ordinals Lat. octAuos, Gr. ogdo(w)os and
>by Got. ahtau.
>        The Indian variants aSTa, aSTA, aSTau find a parallel in Greek
>where the two forms oktO- and okta- coexist early (Homer) in compounds;
>okta- was explained by the analogy with hepta- and hexa- but nothing is
>sure with this mysterious number and the "a" could be genuine (see the Osq.
>form Uhtavis of the Lat. name Octavius).

If the IE laryngeals h1, h2, h3 were analogous to the velar series k^,
k, kw (i.e. they were phonetically palatal /x^/, plain /x/ and
labialized /xw/), then reconstructing a dual form *ok^toh3 (/ok^toxw/)
would explain all these forms (the Sanskrit dual with -u, Gothic
ahtau, Greek *ogdowos "8th", and Latin Octa:vius < *oktoh2wi- <
*ok^toh3i- [=*ok^toxwi-]).


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam