Indo-Aryan migration vs Indigenous origin - scholarly debate

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

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

>        Even writed *h3ekt-, *ok^t-os "4" don't fit well with *kwet- "4"
>(the Greek tessares don't shows any prothesis in any dialect).

Pas de problème, I don't think *kwet(wr)- and *ok^t- are related.
That's really impossible.  But if we can have two roots for IE "4"
(*kwetwr- and *mew- [Hittite  meu-, Luwian mawwa-]), having a third is
no unsurmountable problem.

>The isolated
>Avestan aSti- don't seems sufficient to postulate such a form.

As you say, it cannot be excluded that aSti- is a back-formation on
aSta:, analyzed as a dual.  It also cannot be excluded that *ok^toH(w)
*is* a dual and only Avestan has retained the original singular.

It is interesting to compare Proto-Kartvelian *os^txw- "four".

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