82 PHONOLOGY §11. The Reconstructions p t ph,ih In a certain number of words etymologically connected, chiefly between Indo-Aryan and Greek, an $ (£) in the former appears to correspond to r or 8 in the latter. The commonest examples of this interchange, which has caused considerable difficulty, are the following : Skt. tdksan - carpenter ' : Gk. t€kt<a>v ; Skt. fksa- 4 bear Lat. ursus : Gk. apKro$, Ir. art ; *- Skt. ksan - * to wound ’ : Gk, fcrcivu) 4 kill ' ; Skt. ksi- 4 to dwell Av. Say- : Gk. Kripevos ; ksi- ‘ to possess # : Gk. Krdofiou ; raks- 4 to injure 4 : Gk, ipcyOio ; ksam- 4 earth ’ : Gk. I ksar- 4 flow ' : Gk. ^Oeipta 4 perish ' ; ksi - 4 to de- stroy ' : Gk. (f>8iva). It has been customary to assume a set of IE fricatives to account for these correspondences, namely p , ph, dh, b ut it is certain that th ese creat ions are without serious fou ndatio n, since in the case of some of them Hittite evidence has shown that a quite different kind of explanation is necessary, and in view of this the rest are naturally suspect. Correspond- ing to the Greek and Sanskrit words for 4 earth ' Hittite has tekan- and Toch, A tkam from which it may be deduced that the original form of this word was *dheghom or, with elision of the radical vowel, *dhghom-. In Greek there has been metathesis of the initial consonant group; elsewhere we find elision of the first member of the group: Lat. humus , OIr. zam- } etc. Like- wise for 4 bear ' Hittite has (in all probability) hartagas , from which it can be seen that there has been the same transposition in Gk. apKTos. The Sanskrit forms of these words have de- veloped from original unmetathesised form changed according to the rules of Sanskrit historical phonology. An original H rtkos 4 bear with loss of h ; rtkos, develops through the stages rt$a-> rtsa - to fksa-. The development of the word for 4 earth ', though more complicated as containing a voiced aspirated group, follows the same line in principal: dhghom- >dzham- > d zham- isam-> ksam-. In the case of Skt. ksi , Gk. the original root dhg^hi- produced Indo-Iranian djhi- which was modified to dzhi- and then treated as the initial group of the word for 4 earth In the case of some words Sanskrit has elided the first member in such groups, so that an original *dhghyes 4 yesterday 1 (cf. Gk. transposed) appears as hyas ( <ghycs ). The correspondence of Skt. syend- 4 hawk ' and Gk. Iktwos is of the same nature.
