Re: *a/*a: ablaut

On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:28:21 +0100, Piotr Gasiorowski
<gpiotr@...> wrote:

>Synchronically in PIE, it's morphology that determines the
>choice of the vowel in this case (whatever the historical explanation).
>The point is that the *o of, say, *po:d-s, acc. *pod-m., pl. *pod-es is
>morphophonologically related to *e in gen. *ped(o)s or in derivatives
>like *ped-o-m 'standing-place'. It isn't an independent vowel.

But in cases like this, the primary vowel is *o, and the
derived vowel is *e (the historical explanation being that
*o (= **a:) was shortened to *e in unstressed position,
after which is acquired the stress by Rasmussen's initial
stress law: **pa:d-ás > *péd(o)s, *pa:d-ám > *pédom ~
*pedóm).

How would you analyze the Ablaut that occurs in a word like
*póntoh2s, *pn.th2ós?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
miguelc@...