Re: [tied] Duals, plurals, collectives and the feminine gender

On Tue, 03 Apr 2001 09:38:12 , "Glen Gordon"
<glengordon01@...> wrote:

>Miguel:
>>Yes. The collective is not a plural. Neither is it a dual.
>
>The collective is a plural in deed and ergo relates to the dual nonetheless.

It did not behave as a plural when it comes to verbal agreement.

>>And I don't even believe collective *-(e)h2 has anything to do with >the
>>feminine.
>
>How so? Where does the feminine come from then?

As I said, my current theory is that it comes from the diminutive
*-ik-(/*-ih2).

>You missed something again. I said that final consonantal *-x disappears
>before Common IE (which also explains the lengthening of the inanimate
>collectives like *wedo:r < *wedor-x). Thus *-ix must become *-i:. It was
>only *-ix in the previous Late Mid IE stage, NOT in Common IE so it can't
>possibly become Greek /ia/, only /i:/. There _is_ a dual in *-i: so you are
>arguing against a brick wall here. A later *-i-x exists in Common IE, yes,
>but this is a composite suffix unrelated to the former.

So if *-x became lengthening (*h1, in fact), where does *-h2
(collective, feminine) come from? If you're gonna answer something
about a following vowel later lost, then what was the vowel doing
there in one kind of collectives, and not there in others?

>And certainly, the
>IndoAnatolian stage of Common IE had no feminine nouns, only animate and
>inanimate ones, so I don't quite follow your method of reasoning anyway. Why
>aren't we speaking of the earlier animate-inanimate stage that is known to
>have existed where "feminine" suffixes hadn't existed yet?

You were confusing the collective (*-h2) with the dual (no *-h2). It
is more common to confuse the collective with the feminine (which DOES
have *-h2, but differently), that's why I brought it up.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...