A.ind. dhehi, dehi e la legge di Bartholomae come processo di "terapia linguistica"

The coarticulatory phenomena occurring between eterosyllabic dental clusters in the Indo-European languages are well-known since Brugmann’s time at least. Nevertheless, yet very recently (cf. Hill 2003), it started again a lively debate concerning the development of such clusters in the Indo-Iranian family, with a special regard to the voiced ones, the interpretation of which is linked with the prehistoric ancestors of skt. dhehí and dehí. In the present paper we propose to reconstruct a Proto-Indo-Ir. cluster *–dzd(h)-, which developed into Proto-Indo-Ir. *-zd(h)- only in the two quoted forms, whereas it remained unchanged in the other ones. The paradigmatic pressure from Bartholomae’s Law is suggested as responsible for such a “stoppage”: the emergence of a set of *-dzdh- clusters (> skt. -ddh) created a good pattern for the entire system and blocked out the drift of the phonetic change.