PIE genitive

On Thu, 02 Oct 2003 17:14:27 +0000, merbakos <gigolojoe0@...> wrote:

>The reason I joined this list in the first place
>is because I was curious about the PIE genitive. I was discussing
>the Greek genitive in another forum and started wondering about
>genitive singular terminations in -s v/. the masculine/neuter -ou ,
>which is the only one that doesn't have an -s ending. Did the 2nd.
>declension masc. originally have an s too?

Yes. The Classical (Attic) ending -ou [never actually a diphthong, but a
way to spell long close /o:/ (> /u:/), as opposed to long open /O:/, spelt
omega] comes from -oo, in turn from attested -oio (Homer, Mycenaean),
which, with the usual pre-Greek loss of intervocalic /s/, goes back to PIE
o-stem genitive ending *-osyo (Skt. -asya, Arm. -oy, etc.)

>I think I once read that
>PIE supposedly had only two genders. I suppose some of the masc.
>and fem. forms were distributed into the neuter, which would explain
>why neuters have both types of endings.

It is likely that PIE (or rather some pre-stage of it) only had two
genders: animate and inanimate (= neuter). The feminine is a more recent
creation, as can be deduced from a variety of clues.

>But how did the -s ending
>make it to some masculine genitive singulars? Was it there all
>along in all genders or was this a Greek innovation. If so, what
>caused it?

All genitives had *-Vs (thematic/pronominal *-Vsyo) in PIE. As a general
rule, there is no difference between animate (masculine) and inanimate
(neuter) nouns in the oblique cases. The only difference is in the
nominative, accusative and vocative, where masculines have separate forms
(*-s, *-m, *-0, thematic *-os, *-om, *-e), while neuters have a single form
(*-0, but thematic *-om).


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...