From: Patrick C. Ryan
Message: 8458
Date: 2001-08-11
----- Original Message -----
From: "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2001 7:04 PM
Subject: Etruscan -na (was Re: [tied] Affects of ... etc.)
> Ed states:
> >You're being a bit hairsplitting, Glen. -na is the ending in Etruscan to
> >form adjectives expressing qualities *possessed by*
> >or pertaining to their headwords,
[GeeGee]
> Well, I suppose we should call English /-al/, /-ic/ and /-ese/
> "genitive" suffixes as well alongside the genuine /'s/. Call
> it hair-splitting if you wish but I haven't seen */Larthena
> clenar/ used interchangeably for /Larthal clenar/ yet. Therefore
> /-ena/ is not a genitive ending. It is more of a "pertinential"
> suffix like the above English suffixes.
[PCR]
A very well-represented IE genitive is that in -*y(/*i), which is also (in combination) a suffix forming adjectives.
All case-endings derive from locational and directive postpositions; Nostratic and earliest PIE had no case-endings per se but did have these postpositions (and nouns used as postpositions). Relationship was also simply expressed by simple juxtaposition: A B = A's B or = A-like B or =A near B, etc. In frequent cases, no postposition was necessary to designate the actor is an animate was combined with an inanimate noun: man tree cut, hardly = 'the tree cut the man'.
The relationships covered by the blanket-term "genitive" are several; and possession is only one of them: nearness, sharing of essential qualities, etc. are also involved because the genitive had many uses in PIE that were formerly more distinctively expressed.
The common IE genitive in -*s is probably a simple recycling of IE *se/o, 'behind, with', found in Slavic *s/so.
The accusative in *-m is probably just a postposition originally meaning 'on(to)' (cf. Egyptian m) --- a way of designating which animate noun is getting the verbal action..
The "nominative" in -*s is the same formant; and that is why a number of IE languages employ combined forms for genitives: *-s-yo.
The *-n under discussion is probably, in origin, an inessive ('in the . . .') although there is a common plural in -*n also
Pat
PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE@... (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE: http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)