--- In
cybalist@egroups.com, "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> How do you explain the unreduced *ne- here? The normal composition
form (unless *ne- is secondarily restored, as in Slavic) is just
syllabic *n-, as reflected by Latin impotens < *n-pot- + the
pres.part. of esse). My second objection is that Latin pot(-s)-
represents truncated *pot-i-s rather than consonantal *pot-. In fact,
*poti- is what we find nearly everywhere, while nepot- is clearly a
consonantal stem. To sum up, the expected form of "unable" should be
*n-poti- rather than this aberrant *ne-pot-.
I'm at work here, and don't have my dictionaries handy.
This compound was lexicalized early, and we shouldn't expect it to
behave like other privative compounds. Judging by Ved. <nápa:t>,
it's either a PD of the type *népo:ts, *n.pótos, or (more likely) a
static noun *népo:ts, *népt(o)s.