--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> But in this Germanic verb class the singular has a _short_ vowel;
and in this particular case the original reduplicated plural was _not_
*CeCVD- but CeCD- (to wit, *se-sd- plus a stressed inflectional
syllable).
I guessed that in the singular *{sesód} > *[sesát] the unstressed
initial syllable simply dropped, but in the plural with the stress
elsewhere *{sezd-} > *[sest-] and then the second occurrence of the
reduplicated consonant dropped with compensatory vowel lengthening
due to some sort of dissimilation effect. There are instances in other
languages of a `vowel consonant' becoming `long vowel' before another
consonant.