Thread:User talk:CodeCat/*źambas, *zǫbъ/reply (10)

Yes, both are used, and that's why the redirect can be created. "Alternative form" is ambiguous when it comes to reconstructions. In some cases, there may be two forms that can both be reconstructed and both were demonstrably used by speakers at the time; this would be an alternative form in the same sense that we use it for regular languages. But it could also just mean an alternative reconstruction from a different source, and that speakers really used one or the other but we can't tell which. That isn't really an alternative form though, more like an alternative hypothesis/reconstruction. For the entries I created, I have used "alternative form" entries only in the first sense, and created redirects for the second type. That was the common practice for Indo-European entries before I came to Wiktionary, so I adopted it as well. Several of our PIE entries list alternative reconstructions either on the headword line or in a usage note.