On Sat, 31 Aug 2002 00:36:33 +0000, "Glen Gordon" <
glengordon01@...>
wrote:
>While you feel the need to reconstruct a 9x9 "grid" system of personal endings,
>what language reflects this grid at all?? We can see this is immediately
>misguided.
Of course no (IE) language reflects such a 9x9 grid, but that's the whole point.
If such a grid were actually attested, the origin of the middle would have been
obvious. To use an example recently discussed on this list, if we take the
modern Romance languages, and we see plural forms such as *muros in the West,
*muri in the East, is it really misguided to reconstruct a "2-dimensional grid"
*muri, *muros for the ancestor of Romance? Of course not: that's what it had.
Likewise, if in the middle 3pl. we find *-ntom, *-ntor(i), *-nto(i), *-ntodh(i),
the possibility that all these forms represent the debris of an old paradigm
where each form had its proper function is worth investigating.
>I suppose I should be clear on what the MIE stative endings were that the
>middle endings were built on. This is now what I'm contemplating:
>
> MIE Stative
> -----------
> sing. pl.
> 1 *-xe *-wes
> 2 *-te NULL
> 3 *-e *-e
The 2sg. is *-th2a, the 1pl. is *-m(W)é. A zero ending of the 2pl. (at least at
some pre-stage, leading to PIE *-é) is a possibility, judging by Vedic -á and
perhaps Paelignian lex-e (if a 2pl. perfect, not an infinitive).
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...