I've already come across this idea and was dissatisfied a long time ago.
"Not-Master"?? Let's face it - It isn't a common kind of compound in IE or
elsewhere. It seems all the more likely that it meant "father's offspring",
a meaning that isn't as strange.
Bomhard attempts to reconstruct a Nostratic root *n'ip[h]- "offspring" based
on *nepo:t and Uralic *n'epl� "reindeer calf". Not the most perfect of his
reconstructions, I admit, but unlike him, I have some developped theories
concerning previous stages of IE and its relation to Tyrrhenian that allow
me to evulate his ideas. I arrive by set sound & accent laws at a Mid IE
*nep�TV where T is any dental stop and V is an unknown vowel but I know that
MidIE must have had *-t:- because Etruscan has /-t-/ in /nefts'/ which only
derives from IndoTyr *-t:-. MidIE *-t:- becomes IE *d except when as a
stem-final phoneme in Late IE (after final vowel loss: *nep�t:a > *nep�t: >
*nep�t). All final dental stops merge to *t~*d (*kWit "what?", *est "is",
etc). So MidIE *n�pat:a.
In the opposite direction, I know that Etruscan /nefts'/ must derive from an
earlier form like *nefotta because of sound laws in Tyrrhenian. I now think
that IndoTyr *p became *f. If a syllable containing one or more labial
phonemes has *a-vocalism, *a is rounded to *o (later Etruscan /u/).
IndoTyrrhenian fortis stops like *t: are weighted as "two" phonemes by
geminization in Tyrrhenian (causing some changes in syllable boundaries to
maintain CVC structure). Doubled stops are "unaspirates" in Etruscan and so
we arrive at /nefts'/ just fine. Because of *nefotta, Lemnian /nephoth/ is
totally welcome and its /-o-/ (or rather /-u-/) vocalism is expected. Bring
it on, baby, bring it on :)
- gLeN
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