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

I wish I could fully understand it myself. It seems that occasionally we have *o/*e ablaut without a stress-shift, whatever the underlying mechanism (secondarily immobilised stress?). The *-s genitive is normally found with so-called "flexion fermée" in variably vocalised ("biform") stems (*dóru, Gen. dróus), but there seem to have been isolated CVC stems declined in the same way, i.e. Có:C(-s), Gen. CéC-s rather than C(e)C-ós -- or at least this is what the "auctores" suggest.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: Glen Gordon

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 8:12 PM

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

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?