Re: [tied] Risoe fo the Feminine (was: -osyo 3)

From: elmeras2000
Message: 32302
Date: 2004-04-25

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

[JER:]
> >But is it not the second part of jedinU that means 'one'?
>
> Yes (*oihnos), but there is a first part, and that must have
> meant something too. That the second part means "1" does not
> exclude in the least that the first part had a similar
> meaning (cf. English "only one" = Pol. jedyny = Arm. ez).

Well, nor does it support it very much. Does the v- of Lith. víenas
also mean 'one'? If you say 'only one' in a number of other
languages besides English you do not necessarily get old words
meaning 'one': nur eins, slechts een, kun en, bara en, tol'ko odin,
seulement un, sólo uno. I cannot rank this as serious support.

> >> >And has the feminine *te-sy-aH2-ay not in that
> >> >case lost an /-m-/ in the clustering (Johannes Schmidt again)?
> >>
> >> I don't think so. A simpler solution, I think, is that
> >> *tosyah2 is in fact the feminine form corresponding to masc.
> >> *tosyos, n. *tosyod (the source of gen. *tosyo). Gen.
> >> *tyosyah2 acquired an *-s, and *tosyah2i etc. were
> >> backformed on that.
> >
> >But the enthusiasm for the 'one' solution for the Hittite forms
> >favours an analysis of the very same kind.
>
> I don't follow.

In your own analysis of the Hittite pronouns you give the original
form the very same structure with an embedded 'one' which you reject
for PIE. That could still be true, but it strikes me as a strange
choice.

The form *tosyaH2 does not add up. It would not be the feminine
genitive, but the masculine-neuter genitive accidentally possessing
something in the feminine, so it completely breaks the system.

> >And the stem of dat.-
> >loc.sg. ke:dani (ka:s 'this') is ke:-, cf. gen. ke:l, abl. ke:z
and
> >instr. ke:t. The -d- even appears in the plural, dat.-loc.pl.
> >ke:das. Is that a good sign?
>
> This is Hittite. If neuter sg. *-od > -at "it" (enclitic)
> can come to mean "they" (neuter and masc./fem.), I don't
> think there's a big problem with those plurals in -ed-as.
> The stem of ke:dani etc. is ke:- (< *k^e-), and it doesn't
> make a difference whether we add *-(h1)edh- or *-dh-
> (*k^e-edh-an-i also gives ke:dani). That *e- is really part
> of the "infix" is shown by the personal pronouns amm-ed-az,
> tu-ed-az.

It makes the difference to the analyzability of the whole set that
the facts you need to support your theory do not really do that
since the details have been so thoroughly neutralized.

> >And does it really invite
> >identification with the segment /ed(h)-/ of the other languages?
>
> I think it does. Hittite -ed- appears only in pronouns, and
> only in the dative/locative and the ablative/instrumental
> cases. In other words, *exactly* in the same places where
> we find *-sm- in PIE.

No, that is very optimistic assessment.

If the plural cases with the -d- count for nothing anyway, a much
smoother assessment of the facts is this:

The dative-locative ke:dani has the same stem ke:- as all the weak
cases, and also contains the case ending -i of precisely this case.
That leaves a segment -dan-. In a locative that looks very much like
the Greek adverbs in -don, as éndon 'inside'. And that is what I
would assume it is. The dat.-loc. pl. ke:das would have taken over
ke:d- from the singular. That is no serious support for a flimsy
*edh- 'one'

> >So, if there is "one" in the dative *tesmo:y, the ablative
*tesmV:t
> >and the loc. *tesmi, why is it so bad for the feminine?
>
> It's not bad. It's just less well attested: Baltic and
> Slavic have *-sm- in the dat/loc/ins masculine/neuter, but
> not a trace of it in the feminine. And less obvious
> phonetically: it requires an ad-hoc reduction of *-smy- >
> *-sy-.

Yes, that's the point. That is not new information.

> And would that be exclusively athematic, when the
> masculine "equivalent" [with the exception of loc. *esmi-n,
> *tosmin, etc.] is (largely) thematic?

That was also a point I was making. It would be exactly like devá- :
deví:-, though I did not present it that clearly. This could be one
of the few points where important expectations are really met.

(I'll continue this is a new posting.)

Jens