Re: PS Emphatics

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

>
> On 2008-02-03 23:52, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > Hm. I assume that would be *sU-tráva? Why would that -U- not have
> > been dropped?
>
> Because in the middle of the 5th century it was pronounced as /u/,
> not yet reduced to a schwa-like central vowel; actually, in an
> archaic _noun_ with this prefix I'd even expect *soN- rather than
> *sU- (the latter is primarily a verbal prefix), so a Latinate
> rendering of such a word would have been *<sutraua> or *<santraua>.
> The root would have been that of OCS -trovoN, travljoN 'consume' <
> *treuh- (Gk. trú:o: 'wear out').

Yes, I understood that the first time. The question was meant to be:
why would Gothic which presumably started out with initial stress not
have dropped the /U/ (or /o,/) in a supposedly loaned *so,tráva ?


Torsten