Re: *pot-

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
wrote:

> On 05-02-10 04:02, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:
>
> > That is not clear. *-tn- is not normally reduced in Greek.
> > My guess would be that the accent has someting to do with it
> > (reduction in the compound *démspotnia, but not in the
> > simplex *pótnia).
>
> Compositional simplification is a sufficient explanation here, I

think.

Sufficient /= necessary.

> Other things being equal, constituents of fixed compounds tend to

be

> simplified in various ways in comparison with simplex lexemes. Even

the

> accent pattern is less relevant than the fact that the word in

question

> is a compound (e.g. in English gospel, twopence, waistcoat [I mean

the

> traditional pronunciation] _both_ elements have been reduced). The

same

> thing was certainly true of PIE compounds and reduplications.
>

According to Gorrachategui (Basque and its Neighbors in Antiquity)
the names Doiterus and Doitena are found within the Basque, as in the
Cantabrian-Asturian area. The -terus/-tena suffix variation is
obviously related to gender; G. also believes it's related to the old
heteroclitic paradigm in -er/-en.

-tar "inhabitant of" is found in non-IE Basque and in Iberian.

Something similar to the -r/-n inflection is found in Basque
egur/ehun- "day".


Torsten