Re: o-grade thoughts

> And I also believe that these verbal stems of the hi-conjugation
> were nominal in nature. Cf. the words of the "language of bird
> names".
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/25888
>
> Now watch me do tricks with my new nominal prefix:
>
> PPIE *pad- -> PIE *ped-
> PPIE *a-pad- -> *i-pod- -> PIE *pod-
>
> Nice, huh? I get this free of charge by positing the prefix.
> This ablaut relation is particularly hard to crack, since
> there is normally not any surroundings to the root to "blame"
> for the ablaut. The attempts I've seen to derive it from
> different cases have not been convincing.
>

Alternative proposal for that nominal ablaut, independent of
other IE phenomena:

Piotr observes that the connecting vowel -i- in composites can
be accounted for as part of a PPIE *-a-a- -> PIE *-i-o- rule.
As a consequence we would have:
PPIE *pad- -> PIE *ped- "foot"
PPIE *X-a pad -> PIE *Xipod- "X-footer"
from which languages might generalize one way or the other.


Torsten