On 05-02-10 04:02, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:
> That is not clear. *-tn- is not normally reduced in Greek.
> My guess would be that the accent has someting to do with it
> (reduction in the compound *démspotnia, but not in the
> simplex *pótnia).
Compositional simplification is a sufficient explanation here, I think.
Other things being equal, constituents of fixed compounds tend to be
simplified in various ways in comparison with simplex lexemes. Even the
accent pattern is less relevant than the fact that the word in question
is a compound (e.g. in English gospel, twopence, waistcoat [I mean the
traditional pronunciation] _both_ elements have been reduced). The same
thing was certainly true of PIE compounds and reduplications.
Piotr