Yes, folks. I'm not giving up my "prothetic *a-" theory just yet.
I've been thinking about *(H)o- words and new interpretations
of them. Piotr mentioned *o-sdo- "branch" as a possible, but rare
example of a word with *(H)o- being used as an adverbial prefix.
I'm skeptical, and since I've had so much fun re-interpreting
and lumping together the mysteries of *ok^to:u, *o:wyom and
*o:k^u- as very Late MIE *a-kWtw�x (< *kWetWaxe), *a-xwy�n
(< *xeweiane) and *a-hkw�u (< *ekwawe), respectively, I've decided
that I can't go wrong suggesting a new interpretation of *osdo-
as well.
I suspect that *osdo- reflects an earlier *osdCo- (where *-C-
is some mysterious and disappearing consonant). I add the
consonant because of the fact that the whole reason for the
prothetic vowel was in order to avoid tongue-tripping
triconsonantal consonant clusters after loss of unstressed
schwa in Mid IE, as seen clearly in the above examples.
So, is it possible that *osdo- reflects earlier *osdwo- from
earlier *a-sdw�-. The sound *-w- seems appropriate here given the
*ok^to:u example which shows similar loss of earlier *-w-.
Just a thought or two for you...
- love gLeN
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