>>Another bad example. Although it may be considered
>>a prefix in Late IE, it definitely formed very late,
>>as anyone can see, out of a particle *?e that happened to be positioned
>>before the verb
>
>In other words, prefixed.
As usual, you miss the point. The point is that IE
originally did not have prefixes AT ALL and that *?e-
was originally NOT A PREFIX even though it came to
be used as a dialectal past tense marker in Late IE.
>>As for "mobile *s", these are all Semitoid loanwords
>
>?????
The *s- is functionless. It is a foreign prefix that
was acknowledged as a prefix in IE only because of
minimal pairs of loans with and without this
Semitoid prefix (cf. Akkadian abaru/ustabbir).
The so-called "prefix" was never productive in IE
unless you can show otherwise where others have failed.
>Whether the function can be recovered in no way affects the possibility of
>it having been a prefix.
It also doesn't affect the possibility that it
_wasn't_ a prefix and there are no other secure
examples showing archaic prefixation in IE, so this
only gives more weight to my position.
>Another example of prefixation in PIE are the preverbs (such as the p- of
>Hitt. p-iyati).
Wrong. This is an example of prefixation in _HITTITE_.
Hittite is not PIE itself. It is a language heavily
affected by Hattic substrate. Hattic, as we know, is
a non-IE language replete with prefixation. Is there
a **p- in IE? I don't think so.
- gLeN
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