On Tue, 28 Jan 2003 23:53:42 +0100, Piotr Gasiorowski
<
piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:
>Incidentally, what's the evidence for the "foot" word having ever
>had a static paradigm and a genitive like *péd-s (*péts)? The
>accentuation of Gk. podós, Skt. padás _could_ perhaps be analogical,
>but that's a far cry from demonstrating that it _is_ analogical.
>To treat *pó:ts ~ *pedós as secondary is to stretch the actual evidence.
There is little evidence overall for the static G.sg. in *-s, as it
was largely replaced by analogical genitives in *-es/*-os. Apart from
the regular i- and u-stems (-*ei-s, *-eu-s/*-ou-s), the type is only
attested in a couple of irregular forms (Skt. ma:túr < *mah2tr.s etc.,
Greek des-pote:s < *dems-, Hitt. nekuz < *nekWts), except in Avestan,
where *-s actually was extended analogically to some originally
non-static n- and r-stem paradigms.
The evidence as we have it is telling enough, however, to make the
existence of a gen. ending *-s in PIE a virtual certainty. Whether it
should be reconstructed for the paradigm of *pod-/*ped-, where we are
not so fortunate as to have it attested, depends on one's theories
about the origin of the *-s and the static paradigms in general. One
of the strongest cases we have for *-s is in the word *dom, *dem-s,
and given the structural similarity of *pod-/*ped-, I think
reconstruction of a G. *ped-s is fully justified, even if unprovable.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...