Reconstruction talk:Proto-Indo-European/pléth₂us

@JohnC5: I have been thinking of this for over a year: Any idea how come पृथ्वी (pṛthvī) is not the regular descendant? Feminine singular nominatives of u- adjectives in Sanskrit delete the final sound and add a vī: hence we have उरु - उर्वी (uru - urvī); तनु - तन्वी (tanu - tanvī); रघु - रघ्वी (raghu - raghvī); स्वादु - स्वाद्वी (svādu - svādvī), साधु - साध्वी (sādhu - sādhvī) etc etc. So one would expect पृथ्वी (pṛthvī) from पृथु (pṛthu, “broad, wide”). -- माधवपंडित (talk) 12:20, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

@माधवपंडित: I think that is certainly the analogy that created the outcome पृथ्वी (pṛthvī). The crucial difference is that the this root is seṭ, so there is a voiced laryngeal. Thus *pl̥th₂-w-íh₂ > PIIr *pl̥tHwíH > S pṛthivī́. It's not a matter of the final sound being deleted, but the distinction between *R(∅)-ú-s vs. *R(∅)-w-íh₂. The natural outcome of a root of the shape *CERCH- would be *CR̥CH-ú-s vs. *CR̥CH̥-w-íh₂. An interesting case is that of तनु - तन्वी (tanu - tanvī) from *ténh₂us. One expects *tn̥h₂-ú-s to come out as tanúḥ with regular deletion of a laryngeal between syllabics, but given the expected feminine form *tn̥h₂-w-íh₂ should come out as something like S *tāvī́. This form is obviously too far away from tanú- and was replaced. Strangely, the Vedic feminine was tanū́ with tanvī́ coming later. How to reconstruct or motivate the form tanū́ is beyond me, but to say that the feminine was just a matter of swapping -úḥ with -vī́ is not quite right. I'd also mention that pṛthivī́ appears to be lexicalized very early, giving way to pṛthvī́ in the regular declension. Does this all make sense? —*i̯óh₁nC^[5] 21:06, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

@JohnC5: Totally. I didn't know of seṭ roots either. Sanskrit speakers were very conscious of their language to begin with and the standardization by Panini further motivated the creation of what were thought to be correct terms through analogy. Thanks for the explanation!! -- माधवपंडित (talk) 02:31, 29 December 2017 (UTC)