Re: [tied] Re: Active / Stative

On Mon, 9 Aug 2004, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:

> On Sun, 08 Aug 2004 08:52:37 +0100, petegray
> <petegray@...> wrote:
>
> >>But illi:us and isti:us do _not_ follow the example of
> >>e:ius, cu:ius and hu:ius.
> >
> >That should be eyyus, cuyyus, huyyus. The first vowel is short, the
> >consonantal <i> is double. I rather think this supports the change -sy-
> >> -yy.
>
> Yes. I was citing the Classical Latin forms, where Vjj >
> V:j. The genitives illi:us and isti:us can also derive from
> *istijjus, *illijjus (< *is-tosyo, *olnosyo).
>
> I also asked about the reduction of unstressed /a/ vs. /o/
> in Latin. Is /a/ more resistent to reduction than /o/? I'm
> not confident about the soundlaws governing reduced vowels
> in Latin, but based on the reduction of fac- to fic-
> (afficio, etc.), I'd say there is no difference between /a/
> and /o/. So if *-osyo was reduced to *-ijjo/-i:o, *-asyo-
> should have done the same. Is that correct?

You can't mean this in an objective sense. The Latin vowel reductions are
not shared by the other Italic languages while the loss of intervocalic
*-y- is. Therefore the only pertinent question is whether there can have
been a reduction *-sy- > *-yy- *-y- after non-first vowel prior to the
loss of intervocalic yod. That makes the question about Latin vowel
reductions irrelevant.

Jens