Re: [tied] Neptune, Poseidon, Danu, etc.

Piotr:

>One IE reconstruction of the "house" word is a consonantal stem declined like this: Nom.sg. *do:m, Gen.sg. dem-s (the o-stem form *domos is supposed to be younger). This archaic genitive apparently underlies the compound *dems-potis (restructured into Gk. despote:s).

Hmm, so far my ideas on Mid IE account for the *o/*e ablaut here... but I would have thought that the genitive of *do:m was *demos at the very least. My view is that the genitive with ending *-s (instead of *-es/*os) is caused by the MidIE penultimate accent. The penultimate accent theory predicts *demos for a stem like *dom-. The *-s genitive should be seen in two-syllable words (as with: nom *xWawi-s, gen *xWuei-s < MIE *xWewi/*xWuei-se "bird/of the bird"). Wassup?

- gLeN