Re: [tied] The Rise of Feminines (aka Where's Waldo)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:

>
> >> I never said that the accusative and genitive were actually
> >> related!!
> >
> > I never said you did. I said you posit a preform *-om for both,
>
> Doesn't matter. You're wrong on all counts.
>
> In my view, the preform of the accusative is simply *-m right back
> to ProtoSteppe since it is reflected identically in Uralic. The
> source of the genitive plural is something different altogether
> which I suspect derives from *-ána, shortening to postSyncope eLIE
> *-án which then becomes *-ám sometime in the Late IE period due to
> analogy with accusative *-m. This yields *-óm after Vowel Shift.
>
> Originally the genitive plural would have been a locative

(something

> I just said before and many times before that) but you didn't

listen

> because if you did, you'd realize that this means automatically

that

> I _don't_ posit the above.

You did. I don't really know why I paid so much attention, but I
have not got it wrong to the extent it makes any sense.

> > although the genitive plural has a long vowel in all languages

that

> > can show the difference between *-om and *-o:m.
>
> In athematic declension, the accusative is *-m and the genitive
> plural is *-om. The thematic then is simply the product of thematic
> vowel plus the athematic endings. If you do the math, merely
> grafting the same endings *-m and *-om to thematic stems would
> otherwise produce a homophonous *-o-m.

So you are positing thematic accusative singular *-o-m, athematic
genitive plural *-om. The latter is unacceptable, for there is no
unambiguous evidence for a short vowel here. The two were not
homonymous.

> If homophony weren't a threat to thematic declension during a preIE
> stage, we wouldn't even be talking about *-s-yo, the clearcut

byproduct

> of the inevitable homophonies between the expected thematic

nominative

> singular *-o-s < *-o- + *-s, nominative plural *-o-s < *-o- + *-es
> and genitive plural *-o-s < *-o- + *-os!

The nominative plural of thematic declension was *-oy as preserved
by pronouns. And the genitive to go with that was *-oy-s which,
extended by *-o::m of other declensions, gave thee pronominal *-oy-s-
o::m. The combination of thematic vowel (your "*-o-") and genitive *-
os is the *-es buried in the genitive singular in *-es-yo of
pronouns.

> As for the genitive plural, there was only a possible TWO-way

merger

> which supported a more trivial solution of *-o-?om rather than the
> singular's more creative solution with *-yo.

I can't make out what you are trying to say here.

Jens