Re: [tied] Re: *pot-

On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 10:52:07 +0100, Piotr Gasiorowski
<gpiotr@...> wrote:

>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.

I was thinking that the main effect of the reduction would
have been to reduce simplex 3-syllable potnia to 2-syllable
-potnja. While the cluster -tn- is not reduced in Greek,
the cluster -tnj-, for all we know, *is*, to -jn-. I'm
pretty sure there are no counterexamples.


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...