Re: long o: Nominative

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Andrew Jarrette" <anjarrette@...> wrote:

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> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dubbelax" <dubbelax@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Andrew Jarrette" <anjarrette@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Well, wouldn't one expect Greek *po:s in the nominative singular from IE *po:ts? Odoús has <ou> from *ons (< *onts), which became nasalized *õs which became a long vowel higher than Greek <o:> which was therefore written <ou> (hence <-ous>. At least that's what I've always assumed. Where would <ou> come from in <poús>? Normally *ts becomes <s> in Greek, does it not, without influencing a preceding vowel, long or short? Or am I wrong here? What is the 2nd sg. indic. pres. of *h1ed- in Greek? What other monosyllabic consonant stems end in *-ts < *-ds in PIE (and in Greek)?
> > >
> > > Andrew
> > >
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> > You are right, Andrew - my odoús is an irrelavant example.
> > I do not recall other cases of a final dental + s. I am not an expert in Greek, though. Anyway, methinks that the word in question sounded [pots] in some period of time, with a dental possibly restored after óps etc. What do you think of this?
> >
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> And you mean that the *o: in the nominative singular arose from compensatory lengthening due to the loss of *t, which was later reintroduced on the analogy of <óps> etc.? Sounds good enough for me, but then what about *wo:kWs? Why does it have a long vowel?
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> Andrew
>

I have a counterquestion: Why is <óps> without a long vowel? :-)
The only thing I can say is that wo:kWs is a hypothetical word. If there were really no "original" long vowels in PIE (no vrddhi, no contractions, no nothing), we should reconstruct the protoform with a short vowel. The real forms in various languages, resulting from some loss/compensation, could then have been wo:kW, wo:s or even wo: (if we stick to o-vocalism in Nominative). Everything resembling wo:k(W)s would be secondary and so could be wokWs (although some IE languages might have preserved the original, unlengthened form).

Edgar