Re: [tied] Nominative: A hybrid view

From: Glen Gordon
Message: 22506
Date: 2003-06-02

Jens:
>Also the Hittite ntr.pl. forms in -i must come from somewhere.

Yes, the Hittite ntr.pl. forms come from somewhere... but why
the "dual" per se? We know that *-x (*-h2) is used in a
collective, non-singular sense, unspecific to dual or plural.


Miguel:
>There's also the compund noun huhha-hanna- "grandparents",
>where the first member (huhha-) appears to be in the dual.

That's not very apparent at all.


Jens:
>It fits the dual of the other languages, so does the ntr.pl. -e of the
>enclitic stem -a-, and so do the -w- forms of the 1pl in the verb.

Obviously, Hittite endings are going to compare with dual endings
of other IE languages if the rest of IE innovates existing endings
for the purposes of marking a new dual number that originally
didn't exist! There is nothing inheirantly "dual" about 1pp *-wes
and is used in Anatolian languages to convey the NON-SINGULAR,
both dual AND plural.


- gLeN

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