Contributions to Iranian Etymology IV

Some peculiar developments of preverbs in Middle Iranian

Abstract

This article deals with the etymologies of a selection of words from various Middle Iranian languages, having as a common feature the assumption of an unusual treatment of the preverb. For the first group of words, a progressive voice assimilation is postulated instead of the expected regressive voice assimilation normally operating in Old Iranian. The second group comprises other phenomena such as dissimilation in contact with the root-initial consonant and double prefixation.