From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 33754
Date: 2004-08-10
>> I also asked about the reduction of unstressed /a/ vs. /o/Allright. But /ei/ is of course reduced to /i:/, so we have
>> in Latin. Is /a/ more resistent to reduction than /o/?
>
>No, but after the reduction analogy works differently.
> All short vowels in medial open syllables act the same way. Normally
>reduced to -i-, but phonetic conditions may produce something else, e.g. -e-
>in the presence of /r/, -u- in the presence of velar-l or w.
> However in compounds based on simplexes with -o-, the -o- was normally
>restored, and this is not true of compounds with -a-. The reduction of -o-
>to -i- survives only in forms whose derivation was not obvious, such as
>memini < *me-mon-ai.
> In closed syllables, the reduction of short vowels is to -e-, which
>normally survives.
>
>> So if *-osyo was reduced to *-ijjo/-i:o, *-asyo-
>> should have done the same. Is that correct?
>
>No. The first step is *-osyo, *-asyo > *-esyo. The -e- should then
>survive, since the syllable is closed. Neither would be reduced to -ijjo.