From: Rick McCallister
Message: 53943
Date: 2008-02-22
> On 2008-02-21 21:46, Patrick Ryan wrote:____________________________________________________________________________________
>
> > Why is it *dwo- rather than *dwé-?
> >
> > Before endings added.
>
> In theory, it's *dw-e/o-, a thematic stem. The
> thematic vowel was *e or
> *o, the colour being originally determined by the
> ending -- *o if the
> first segment of the ending was voiced, *e otherwise
> (this original
> distribution was often disturbed by analogical
> levelling, especially in
> the declensional system). If *dw-o: comes from
> *dw-o-X, where *X is the
> original animate nom.du. ending, the quality of the
> thematic vowel
> suggests that *X was a voiced or an *o-colouring
> consonant. As *h3 was
> both, it's possible that the anim. nom.du. should be
> reconstructed as
> *dw-o-h3.
>
> All the other dual case forms, animate as well as
> neuter, had voiced
> endings, so the thematic vowel of the numeral 'two'
> was *-o- across the
> board. However, if 'two' occurs as the first member
> of a compound, we
> find the bare stem *dw-V- with the thematic vowel
> reduced to *-i-, hence
> the compositional variant *dwi-.
>
> Piotr
>
>