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I came across this Mycenaen word when I was trapped in a Wikipaedia chain:

the verbal augment is almost entirely absent from Mycenaean Greek with only one known exception, enter image description here (𐀀𐀟𐀈𐀐), a-pe-do-ke (PY Fr 1184), but even that appears elsewhere without the augment, as enter image description here (𐀀𐀢𐀈𐀐), a-pu-do-ke (KN Od 681). — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenaean_Greek

I presume this is the third person singular aorist from ἀποδίδωμι, "he gave". Perhaps ἀπο and Latin a(b(s)) in aufero etc. are related. Is there any conexion at all between the Mycenaean u and the Latin u here? My guess would be coincidence, and a(b(s)) and ἀπο might not be related at all (I believe ὑπό is related, at least), but who knows?

P.S. I see Linear B in Firefox, although I now see that they won't show up in Chrome. Do you have a Linear B font installed? You could get the Aegean fonts here: http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d

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    Not ἀποδοκέω but ἀποδίδωμι, I believe (aor. ἀπέδωκε). As for au-, it's not at all clear that it's related to abs-.
    – TKR
    Commented Mar 14, 2017 at 19:57
  • @TKR: Ah, that's alos possible. But why do you think it isn't from ἀποδοκέω?
    – Cerberus ♦
    Commented Mar 14, 2017 at 20:12
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    Somewhat related old question on Linguistics SE: linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/3405/…
    – TKR
    Commented Mar 14, 2017 at 20:28
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    All that Greek shows up as just empty boxes in my browser, both here and in Wikipedia. I assume you didn't mean to have eight identical boxes (but I never was strong with Greek so it's hard to judge). Could you add them as images?
    – Joonas Ilmavirta ♦
    Commented Mar 14, 2017 at 20:32
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    There was a flag to close this as off-topic. Although the site name is Latin, we have decided to allow questions about some forms of Greek, and this question is therefore on topic. This might be on-topic on some other SE sites as well, but it does not make it off-topic here.
    – Joonas Ilmavirta ♦
    Commented Mar 16, 2017 at 21:16

1 Answer 1

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The υ of ἀπύ (also attested in Arcado-Cypriot, which is the most conservative group of Greek dialects and often shows similarities with Mycenaean) is a secondary development within the Greek dialects, and not inherited from Indo-European. This is shown by many cognates which reflect o, e.g. Hitt. appā, Skt. apa, Russ. po. So it's unlikely to be related to anything in Latin.

The change of ab- to au-, if that's what it is, seems to be a Latin- (or Italic-?) specific sound change before f: au-fero, au-fugio. However, it is also possible that this au- reflects a separate Indo-European morpheme h₂eu- 'away', and is not related to ab- at all.

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