Miguel Carrasquer wrote:
> Funny, I've always thought the _verb_ looked secondary in
> this word-group. It is restricted to Germanic, where it has
> a meaning ("find") which is a long way off the path followed
> by the noun.
Isn't that an argument in favour of the antiquity of *finþan?
Semantically, it's easy to get from 'find (out)' to the meaning of a
(resultative) root noun, 'a trail from A to B'. Especially as the noun,
be it *pónto:h2s or *pónth2os, is not directly attested in Germanic. The
closest thing we have there is *fanþjan- 'infantry' (OE fe:þa, perhaps a
Hoffmann compound, *ponth2i-h3o:n).
I'd derive *pénto:h2s from *penth2- as a root noun, assuming that an
anaptyctic vowel developed already in pre-PIE between the final
obstruents because of the untypical sonority profile of the root
(something that didn't happen in the -eRH configuration):
*penth2-z --> *pent&h2-z --> pénto:h2s
We have the very same thing in *meg^o:h2-s. Now the o-grade forms aren't
terribly problematic: *pónth2o- can be explained as a "Rasmussen
derivative" (**O-pn.th2-ó-, substantivised, with shifted accent);
*pónth2i- is a variant thereof with a reduced thematic vowel (perhaps
decompositional); regular syncope after a sonorant plus /t/ yields Lat.
pons.
Piotr