Jesse Goulet wrote:I need someone to check another root for me. I need the root for the comparative adjective πλείων, -ον. Mounce lists it as "πλειο" but I'm not sure that's correct because it declines in the 3rd declension and its genitive form (in all genders) is πλειονος so I figured it should actually be "πλειον" instead. And then Mounce lists the root of μείζων, -ον as "μειζον" instead of "μειζο".
Barry Hofstetter wrote:It's perhaps more important to remember that πλείων is the comparative of πολύς, and μείζων the comparative of μέγας.
klriley wrote:Sihler gives the IE root as pleH, with the form polu traced to polHu. He notes a number of irregularities. You are dealing with a syllabic resonant (l) and in some forms the effect of a following y. Some of the forms of polu and related words simply aren't what they should be according to theory. Some of the answers to your observations lie in the fact that l m n and r were vocalic/semivocalic in IE as well as consonantal. Some languages consistently translated syllabic 'consonants' to vowel + consonant, others to consonant + vowel, and still others seem to have had complicated (and sometimes unknown) rules of when either choice was to be made. Another part of the answer lies in vowel gradation, and the rest somewhere in the mists of history. It is good that there are still some mysteries left.
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