Re: [tied] Bader's article on *-os(y)o

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

> About the *t/*n thing that Jens just introduced into this
> topic, it's the lamest thing yet. Just because two quite evidently
> different endings appear to be used for different verbs doesn't
> automatically mean that *t and *n are the same phoneme! God, this
> is daft. With the heteroclitic declension we can be sure that
> *r and *n do oscillate, giving rise to the Heteroclitic Rule
> of *-n > *-r. Afterall, to assume that there was some hidden
> morpheme in there that gave rise to the change would be
> impermissible assumption. We start with what we see, that *r
> and *n oscillate and are the same morpheme, and the Heteroclitic
> Rule suffices as a solution.
>
> However, I'm sorry, but nothing shows that *-no- and *-to- are the
> same morpheme aside from their similar function anymore than *so-
> and *to- are the same morpheme or "to" and "though" in English.
> These are completely assumptive connections that aren't grounded in
> any firm reality and then they are introduced to confuse a topic
> further about the origins of the morphemes that were originally
> under debate.

The participial morphemes *-to- and *-no- are isofunctional, so are
the shorter forms of agent nouns in *-t- and *-en-. That may be a
coincidence, and no doubt you know that it is just that. God, this
is clever. Still, I want to try to see if it can be a principled
thing that will lead us further. It turns out to look quite
promising.

Jens