Re: s-stems in Slavic and Germanic

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Joao S. Lopes" <josimo70@...>
wrote:

> I was wondering if such s-stem words could be derived from PIE,
> or be just innovations or s-extensions. There's a bunch of matches
> that seem to be IE-widespread, like *nebHos (Greek nephos=Hit
> napash=Skt nabhas=Slav nebo) and *g^en(h?)os (genos=genus=janas).

[...]

> Latin is also full of such names (genus, munus, foedus, scelus,
> etc), but I don't know about Celtic examples, probably they existed
> too.

Old Irish has some neuter s-stems, including <nem> 'sky, heaven', a
reflex of *nebHos (via PCelt. *nemos). Others that I can find easily
are <slíab> 'mountain', <glenn> 'valley', <tech> 'house', <leth>
'side', <og> 'egg', <mag> 'plain, open field', <áu> ~ <ó> 'ear',
<clú> 'fame', <comlóg> 'equal payment', <delg> 'thorn, pin',
<glún> 'knee' (< PCelt. *gnu:nos-, cognate with Lat. <genu:>, and
probably <grúad> 'cheek'.

There is a unique masc. s-stem <mí> 'month' < PCelt. *mi:ns < PIE
*meh1ns- 'month, moon'.

Brian