72 PHONOLOGY kh : sahkhd- ' shell Gk. Kvyxos ; iAkhd r branch Arm. tax t Lith. sakd ; khA- ' well Av. xL In contradistinction to the sonant aspirates which constitute an ancient and primary element of the IE phonetic system, the surd aspirates are a late creation, and recent advances in IE theory have made it possible to show how they came into existence. Apart from some possible cases of spontaneous aspiration in combinations with s (Skt. sthag-, etc.), their origin can be attributed to a combination of IE h with a pre- ceding unaspirated surd. The nature of this h which has lately figured largely in IE studies will be examined below. For the present it will be sufficient to remark that it has disappeared in all IE languages except Hittite, but when immediately pre- ceded by p t t, k, it has had the effect of aspirating these con- sonants. Thus the aspiration which in Skt. sthd- * stand ’ (IE sta, i.e. staH-, i.e. ste h 2 ) arises in the first instance from the reduced form of the root, IE srii- (Skt. tistha<titi-stn-eti) t and is generalised from there. In Greek on the other hand (urrrjfu) the unaspirated t proper to the strong form of the root has pre- vailed. In Sanskrit path - ‘road’ (Instr. pathA , etc.) <patn~, H is a suffix which appears in its guna grade as a (<aii) in nom. s. panthds. In the latter case th appears only by analogy from the weak cases, as is confirmed by the Av. form panta (original alternation pantaii-patn-). The root prath- 1 to ex- tend ' and its derivatives [prthu- ‘ broad etc.) contains two incorporated suffixes (IE pl-et- H-), the combination producing the surd aspirate in Sanskrit. This h- suffix, without the inter- vening t- suffix appears in Hitt, palhis * broad ", and in Lat. planus . In Gk. TrXarvs , no k- suffix is present, and there is therefore no aspiration. In Skt. rdtha- f chariot 1 we have a nominalised adjective ( *ratii-d ‘ wheeled 1 with a common change of accent) based on the d (-ah) stem which appears in Lat. rota ‘ wheel * (rotan). A corresponding aspiration of sonants by h is possibly a factor to be considered, but not many examples have been found. Such an instance may appear in Skt. smdhu - ' river ' as compared with the root syand - ‘ to flow ", where the form of the noun may be easily explained by the presence of an h- suffix before the final u- suffix. It is believed that one type of IE h (h 3 ) affected a preceding surd differently, by voicing it, in Skt. pibati = 0. Ir. ibid
