On 2008-10-31 22:05, Arnaud Fournet wrote:
> Greek phu-o "grow" with a short u from bhuH-o-
> is an obvious support to the idea that
> ku-on with a short u is from kuH2-on
>
> How do you explain these short u from -uH- ?
In *bHuh-e/o- there is no compensatory lengthening for the simple reason
that only a laryngeal in a syllable coda (final and preconsonantal)
caused a preceding vowel to get lengthened. The disyllabic variant
*k^uwo:(n) is a so-called "Lindeman form". Such a "drawling"
pronunciation was only found in fundamentally _monosyllabic_ words
beginning with *CR-. The disyllabic pronunciation of *-uh2o- (as in the
gen.sg. *swek^ruh2os) was obligatory and not sensitive to word-length.
Piotr