[tied] Re: PIE genitive plural *-o:m, a possible analysis

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
wrote:

>
> On 2006-04-26 09:05, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > Linear B is full of '<so-many>-po' 's "<so many>-footer"'s, and

no

> > feet at all.
>
> Given their nature, Linear B texts cannot be assumed to be
> representative of spoken Mycenaean Greek and its lexicon. They are
> disbursing records, in which certain areas of vocabulary (wool,

cloth,

> oil, grain, types of vessels, names of offices and occupations,

etc.)

> are overrepresented for obvious reasons. In the Ancient Greek text
> corpus (prose and poetry, including Homer), <pous> is about 8.5

times

> more frequent than <tri-pous> (safely the most common compound

with this

> second member), 42 times more frequent than <tetra-pous>, 151

times more

> frequent than <a-pous> and 754 times more frequent than <argi-

pous>.

>

And that's where I contend that PIE had *pe:s but *-po:s. That
confusing situation would have to the occasional mistakes *po:s and
*-pe:s. Latin resolved the situation in the direction of the unbound
form: tri-pe:s, quadru-pe:s, Greek chose the bound form as pattern
(because of some old undocumented shibboleth conflict?).


Torsten