Actually, I should correct myself slightly.
I said:
>[...] as part of a larger MidIE declensional system with 3 genitives
>(*-ese, *ele and *-ane), accusative (*-m), ablative (*-ete) and locative
>particles (*dei, *bei)
I should be careful here. Actually, the suffixes are more
technically *-se, *-le, *-ne, *-m and *-te, without the first
*-e-. Thus the following:
*xawei (se) "(the) bird" / *xawei-se "of the bird"
(Late IE *xawi/*xuei-s... note *-se and not *-ese)
versus
*kewane (se) "(the) dog" / *kewena-se "of the dog"
(Late IE *kwo:n/*kun-os... note vowel in the genitive
*-o- is lost in the nominative)
As you can see, in Late IE, the genitive is not only *-es or *-os
but also *-s in some paradigms, indicating that the MidIE suffix
doesn't really begin with a vowel. In other words the *-e- or *-o-
of *-es/*-os is the vowel that had been lost in MidIE, retained in
the non-nominoaccusative cases. Hope everyone gets it through their
thick skulls this time.
Carry on.
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gLeNny gEe
...wEbDeVEr gOne bEsErK!
home:
http://glen_gordon.tripod.com
email:
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