From: tgpedersen
Message: 52259
Date: 2008-02-04
>How screwy. I'll write it *so,-tra´va then, to mark that the stress is
> --- 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 ?