Re: [tied] Pontos < *H2ep-?

Ok, I understand your point. But, first of all, what is the Greek Pontos? Black Sea or Meditarrranean? Hesiod call it "atrygetos pelagos", "barren plain".

Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

Joao S. Lopes wrote:

> Focusing in this "watery" subject, an idea ocurrs:
> Greek Pontos "sea", usually analysed as <*pentH2- "way, bridge" (cf.
> pons, puti, panthan-), would be more logically <*H2p-wont-o- "watery",
> akin to Sanskrit a:pavant-.

To begin with, the reconstruction *h2p-wont-o- looks ad hoc. Why the
o-grade in the suffix in a thematised form? One would expect *-wn.t-o- >
Gk. -[w]ato-. Also, I don't think you are free to posit laryngeal loss
in this position in Greek (even if one accepts the nil grade of the root
in this kind of formation); the *h2 would have been vocalised as /a/.
Finally, what's logically wrong with *ponth2o- as 'road' > 'the sea'? To
a seafaring folk, the sea is a road. Even Germanic kennings refer to the
sea in such terms, cf. Old English sægl-ra:d 'sailroad', hwæl-ra:d
'whale-road', bæþ-weg 'bathway'.

PIotr