Miguel:
>"Locative ending" was a bad choice of words. The locative ending
>was in fact zero, to which *i (postposition?) could optionally be >suffixed
>(also to the dative). In the verb, the structure is: >VERBAL_ROOT -
>PRONOUN - *i (e.g. *hes *mu *i > *hesmi, perhaps >translatable as "being I
>in").
How do these semantics relate to Basque dative endings, which
afaiwa (as far as I was aware), were used for a different purpose?
The uses of *-i in both the locative and in the primary conjugation
are clearly late innovations. Reconstructing them for an early
stage of IE seems rather painful and over the top. Optional
suffixation couldn't have lasted for thousands of years. Either
*-i was there or it was not. It is interesting to note that only
IE has this ending. No language group purported to be related to
IE has such an ending. This makes it more unlikely that *-i is
very ancient.
>>Is there any instance in IE of *-o:i?
>
>As a 1sg. verbal marker, no. There is Luwian *-(a)wi.
No, I mean, in general. Not specifically as a 1ps suffix but simply
occuring somehow in any IE word. Was this sequence not possible
in IE perhaps? If it were not possible in Late IE, perhaps it had
been at one time (ie: *-o:i > *-o:).
- gLeN
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at
http://www.hotmail.com