Re: Lat. premere / pressus

> I've never been clear on the origin of the alternation seen in the Latin
> verb <premo> / <premere> / <pressi> / <pressus>. The IEW's position (IEW
> pp.818-19), if I understand it correctly, is that <prem-> and <pres->
> show two different (and semantically opaque) derivational suffixes
> attached to the same stem, but I don't know of a single other Latin verb
> that shows this kind of contrast within a single paradigm. Are there any
> other theories on the origin of the <premere> / <pressus> alternation?

There is one other verb root which shows similar variants: *trem- ~
*tres- 'tremble'. As opposed to *prem- ~ *pres- (or *pret/d-? otherwise
the <-ss-> in <pressus> must be analogical) ~ *prem-, both *trem- and
*tres- can be found outside Italic, hence the frequently repeated
suggestion that *prem- ~ *pres- owes its existence to the influence or
*trem- ~ *tres-. Of course the latter pair is as puzzling as the former,
but there are other examples of alliterating "extended" roots like
*drem-, *drah2-, *dreu- 'run' or *gWem-, *gWah2- 'move, come',
presumably scattered relicts of barely reconstructible pre-PIE
morphology. It's all guesswork, of course.

> My best guess so far is that the <-m-> of <premo> / <premere> is a nasal
> infix, assimilated to a labial under the influence of the initial <p->,
> though that doesn't fully explain what the original stem would have been
> (<pressi> could reflect <*pred->, <*pret->, <*pres->, or perhaps simply
> <*pre->). Do you see any problems with this theory?

Extra-Italic cognates have *per- 'push, hit, fight' (with no extensions).

Piotr