You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Khotanese ysare ‘old age’, śve ‘dog’ and the development of *-uāh

The aim of this article is to demonstrate that Khotanese ysare ‘old age’ is derived from the n-stem noun *zaru ̯ an- and thus results from a reconstructed nom.sg. *zaru ̯ āh, with recharacterisation of the nom.sg. marker *-h on the expected outcome *zaru ̯ ā < *-ōn < pre-PIE *-on-s. The article also discusses other nouns that testify the development of Proto-Iranian *-u ̯ āh in word-final position and argues that, in postconsonantal position, *-u ̯ āh first evolved into long *-ē [eː], preserved as such in accented monosyllables, and then developed into short -e in polysyllabic words.